Summary of Podesta Wikileaks Revelations, & a word on Putin

(the list of revelations following the introduction will continue to grow from my massive notes on the emails – so far these are relatively few).

The public releases that Wikileaks has provided as par as the Podesta emails are an incredible and unprecedented glimpse into the corruption and collusion that are the establishment, and specifically the Democratic political part machine.

However, a major factor that has protected Hillary and her campaign (other than the obvious leftist bias one) has gone largely unnoticed. It has gone unnoticed because media outlets don’t like to call themselves “lazy”. Megan Kelley on Fox did mention this factor briefly, but basically it requires a lot of of work and time to go through these released emails to find newsworthy pieces. It requires more time to then understand their context, and investigate the background and the issues being discussed. Definitely harder than a released Trump “sex tape”.

 

Furthermore, the fact that the releases have been coming in batches makes it even worse. It means all the relevant searches you have done previously on a certain matter (for example you searched for all emails containing the word “Netanyahu”) are not definitive and have to be done again. Most often, the new batches, contain replies and long email chains to previous emails which may have previously not seem very meaningful.

 

Right now we are probably, according to Wikileaks sources, at about the half way point… so there are still many emails to come (unless Hillary, Kerry and Obama wielding the world’s most powerful state machinery are able to somehow silence them). They definitely have leverage and bargaining chips over the main known player, Julian Assange, who is being hunted down and has spent the last 4 years holed up inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London (who probably wouldn’t mind the US calling off it’s extraditions efforts), and somewhat less so over the second alleged (by Hillary) player, Putin’s Russia (more on that later).

 

Short of them negotiating a stop to the leaks, or being able to detain not only Assange but all other pertinent players and their servers and backups (highly unlikely), these releases will continue to come, and they are most definitely getting “juicier” as they progress.

 

Given these difficulties, and the media’s typical left-wing bias (which during this campaign has grown beyond that into a giant thrallish monolithic surrogate the likes of which have never been seen) , the coverage of the revelations in the John Podesta emails has been, to put it mildly, non-existant.

 

So, let’s put some of the major ones that have come out so far in one place for easy reference. If you want more details on any specific one, I urge you to look into it, I will try to be as brief and as concise as possible, since there are hundreds of emails which alone merit entire articles to look into in depth.

 

The Wikileaks Source and HRC’s Vladamir Putin Claims

Before the list, let us address the issue of their source. The Hillary campaign has made a big issue that they were obtained by Russia, and that Putin is interested in helping Trump win. She even called him Putin’s puppet in the last debate, and when Trump (somewhat childishly) retorted, “No puppet… you’re the puppet” the mainstream media went crazy reporting that Trump had called Hillary a puppet (and a “nasty woman”) as part of his sexism and “war on women”, without of course mentioning that Hillary started the whole puppet thing, and noting that not only is she in fact a “woman”, but that “woman” is not a curse word in the English language (and it would have been odd to call her a “nasty man” or just maybe a “nasty”).

 

Firstly, the known source of the release is Wikileaks, which has an impeccable record for accuracy, whatever else you may think of them. So whoever it is that originally got them, Russia or not, the content is real, whether Putin paid the hackers who got the emails or not.  One email clearly shows Podesta sending his login and password details in an email to staff:

 

jpodesta

P$assw0rd

 

 

Russian hackers? Maybe but my grandmother could have cracked that one in 10 guesses. Podesta also reveals that he lost his mobile phone while getting out of a cab on Sept 19 20015, and asked staffers to help him retrieve it. It seems like he went a day without it, the cab company returning it the next day, and the email exchanges show no concern about security of any kind. There are other security and password related emails, including about other accounts such as his Georgetown address podesta@georgetown.edu, which show that Podesta had little concern or knowledge about security and that his staff had access to at least some of his email accounts and passwords. Not difficult to see how his account would have no difficulty being compromised in any number of ways.

 

So how did the Putin narrative come about?

 

Well, the Podesta emails reveal that it had been a long-planned Democratic strategy to attack Trump for his Putin “bromance”.

 

During the first presidential debate, cyber security came up as a topic and Hillary, as was part of her planned talking points, said increasingly states and organs of states were hacking into US systems (such as the DNC), speficially Russia, and that Trump has been praiseworthy of Vladamir Putin.

 

Trump replied rather well, and accurately, that firstly she had no idea who hacked into the DNC, that it could in fact have been Russia, or China or famously a 400 pound guy sitting on his bed. Clinton had no answer to that because in fact no one knew (at least not publicly) that Russia as a state had hacked into the DNC. Here Hillary was just naming something bad Putin allegedly did to attack Trump’s “bromance” with him. Podesta’s emails had not been released yet. Clinton did not and could not name other potentially “bad” Putin actions such as the annexation of the Crimea, backing of pro-Russian rebels in the rest of Ukraine, or succesful propping up of the Assad regime in opposition to the US because those would be all too clearly tied to her and her failures.

 

But no one would blame Hillary for cyber security of DNC servers (as opposed to her campaigns emails which not yet been released), so the hillary camp figures that was a “safe” thing to blame on Putin in order to say “bad guy” and then “Trump likes bad guy”. I will discuss the entire Putin dynamic in a later article, but that was step one.

 

Step 2 came in the second debate. By then, the first podesta emails had been released, and some of the early revelations were starting to come out such as her speech to Goldman Sachs.

 

The Hillary camp knew the weak part of her Putin line in the first debate had been lack of evidence for her categorical accusation, to which Trump had correctly responded with “You don’t know who hacked the DNC”. So obviously, after the debate, the Hillary/DNC/Obama machine got working on giving her some support.

 

As far as the fact that she tells bankers one thing, voters another, and tells bankers that candidates needs “private” and “public” opinions (to appease those pesky dumb voters), Hillary was prepared with a rebuttal by referencing Abraham Lincoln, or at least the movie. It flopped, no one understood it (apparently having to do with racist remarks Lincoln could have said… though ultimately he did free the slaves), but it ended up helping her anyway because it got the conversation off the topic.

 

But for the Russian backed hacking accusation, as opposed to the situation in the first debate, she now could quote the”intelligence community”:

 

Martha, because our intelligence community just came out and said in the last few days [conveniently] that the Kremlin, meaning Putin and the Russian government, are directing the attacks, the hacking on American accounts to influence our election. And WikiLeaks is part of that,

 

So between the first debate and second, Hillary was able to get some government source to provide a base that she could then further stretch and misquote.

 

Trump replied to both parts of her answer; after getting audience laughs at pointing out Hillary blamed her lying on the late great Abe Lincoln, he continued:

 

…OK, Honest Abe, Honest Abe never lied. That’s the good thing. That’s the big difference between Abraham Lincoln and you. That’s a big, big difference. We’re talking about some difference.

But as far as other elements of what she was saying, I don’t know Putin. I think it would be great if we got along with Russia because we could fight ISIS together, as an example. But I don’t know Putin.

But I notice, anytime anything wrong happens, they like to say the Russians are — she doesn’t know if it’s the Russians doing the hacking. Maybe there is no hacking. But they always blame Russia. And the reason they blame Russia because they think they’re trying to tarnish me with Russia… but I know nothing about the inner workings of Russia. I don’t deal there. I have no businesses there. I have no loans from Russia.

 

By the time of the third debate, the wikileaks revelations were getting worse for Clinton (if anyone cared to cover them instead of the fact that Trump, like most men, finds beautiful girls..attractive and is liable to on occasion talk about that in private), and she took the same shaky source and stretched it further (since lying the first time had not seemed to matter):

 

What is really important about WikiLeaks is that the Russian government has engaged in espionage against Americans. They have hacked American websites, American accounts of private people, of institutions. Then they have given that information to WikiLeaks for the purpose of putting it on the internet. This has come from the highest levels of the Russian government. Clearly from Putin himself in an effort, as 17 of our intelligence agencies have confirmed, to influence our election.

 

Trump responded:

 

That was a great pivot off the fact that she wants open borders. Okay? How did we get on to Putin?

 

…Just to finish on the borders…Now we can talk about Putin. I don’t know Putin. He said nice things about me. If we got along well, that would be good. If Russia and the United States got along well and went after ISIS, that would be good. He has no respect for her. He has no respect for our president.

 

And the exchange went for a while, with Hillary accusing Trump of encouraging espionage against the US and quoting the 17 intelligence agencies in further and further distortions.

 

Now let’s actually take a look at hillary’s “17 intelligence agencies” claim.

 

Only two agencies actually weighed in on the issue in a joint statement on Oct 7 AFTER Hillary had made her first claim in the 1st debate, named as the

 

• Department of Homeland Security
• Office of the Director of National Intelligence

 

So firstly, where does hilary get the 17 agencies? Well the Director of National Intelligence formed by President Bush after the lessons of 9/11 (where it appeared that having better sharing of intelligence between the different intelligence agencies would have been helpful), and he serves as the head or representative of the “intelligence community” to the President.

 

So unlike the other intelligence agencies, the DNI is not an intelligence agency itself, but rather a political office that is supposed to help coordinate and integrate the intelligence agencies. The so called “intelligence community” is made up of 16 different agencies, most of which of course would have nothing to do with this kind of investigation, and by counting all of those plus the DNI itself, you get to 17 (kind of like counting the President as one of the cabinet members, which isn’t done).

 

So Hillary obviously misleadingly took a statement by the Director of National Intelligence, an Obama appointee, and attributed it to the independent conclusions of 17 different intelligence agencies.

 

Firstly, keeping the number at 16 would be more authentic than getting that extra one which means that all 16 got that conclusion, and then all 16 together made the same one which equals 17. But who cares, it’s not like the media ever fact checks here.

 

Perhaps most importantly, the fact that the statement is a joint statement between the DNI and Homeland Security points out that it is not the same as a statement by all 16 (or 17, as you wish) agencies. This could mean for example, that 15 of the agencies thought otherwise, but DNI decided to issue and second, the opinion of only one, Homeland Security.

 

If any statement by the DNI automatically implied that it was shared by all 17 agencies, why would the joint statement specifically name only Homeland Security among the sixteen intelligence agencies?

 

Now, just for kicks, please note that while some of the 16 agencies would be relevant agencies on this issue (and who are clearly missing from the joint statement) such as the NSA and CIA, here are some of the others on that list:

 

• Coast Guard Intelligence
• State Department (having been run by Hillary herself or Kerry for the last 8 years)
• Dept of the Treasury
• DEA (yes the drugs one)
• Department of Energy (kid you not)

 

The statement is obviously political in nature and timing, and directly the decision of the Director of National Intelligence, James R Clapper, a 2010 Obama appointee best known for having lied under oath to congress about the NSA collecting data without warrants from millions of ordinary Americans. Congressmen called for his resignation and accused him of perjury, and in this case to cite his Wikipedia article here will suffice:

 

Media observers have described Clapper as having lied under oath, having obstructed justice, and having given false testimony.

 

So much for credibility and Hillary’s 17 agencies. Clearly Clapper is a credible, non-partisan professional who just wants to guard the integrity of the US elections.

 

If one candidate wins, he is clearly out of there, and if the other wins, he will continue to have a bright political future, I wonder which is which.

 

But even Clapper had to hedge his statement, it didn’t matter since Hillary could stretch it into whatever she wanted (and she did), but it was best if the actual statement wasn’t too detached from reality.

 

So the main claim in the statement was that the recent releases in wikileaks and elsewhere (without specifically naming neither DNC nor Podesta):

 

are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow—the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.

 

Consistent with methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts is a far cry from having evidence that Russia in fact directed them. Furthermore, believing that senior-most officials authorized the efforts (again, without evidence other than speculation due to the “scope and sensitivity” of these), is also not the same as saying the Kremlin and specifically Putin authorized them as Hillary repeatedly claimed.

 

Trump should ask the Coast Guard Intelligence what they figure.

 

The strongest evidence I have seen that Russia is at least related the releases is that RT news seems to have accurate and fast breaking news when a new batch of Podesta emails is released, meaning that they could potentially have had access to them previously.

 

However, what is clear is that Hillary has no idea how podesta’s emails got taken, nor does she nor her staff seem to know much about cyber security at all (which is why they are suffering all of these scandals), and wheather Russia was involved in their release to wikileaks or not, their contents are accurate and extremely troubling.

 

When Trump’s tax returns were stolen and released against his wishes, Hillary’s campaign did not have qualms about using their content to attack Trump (they showed the “shocking” revelation that Trump, like most Americans, claims legal deductions allowed by law, law created by senators such as HRC, in order to pay less rather than more taxes), and Trump did not start complaining that the Russians must have stolen them. Illegally stolen and released as they were, their content was true, and he simply dealt with that.

 

The Podesta emails Revelations

In order to be appreciated, the breadth of the emails has to be reviewed, which has not helped them be covered since it cannot be done quickly. And in general so far they reveal two main aspects of Hillary Clinton. To many, neither would be a surprise. To me, the extent of one was.

 

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, they reveal a candidate that is so highly scripted, that it would make the most cynical Hollywood script seem idealistic and naive.

 

The most incredible feeling anyone reading through the email is overwhelmed by, is the fact that in thousands upon thousands of pages, there virtually never is a discussion of what the RIGHT position on any issue is. There is never any discussion on policy for policy’s sake, or even the kind of political discussion your average person would have when getting together with friends. There is not that, nor a more advanced version of it, there is nothing.

 

The efforts are continuously and tirelessly about what political position and what political action should be taken to win. Conversations about how to “backtrack” previous political positions (which were obviously deemed convenient at that time) are held without the slightest concern about whether the candidate (Hillary) is actually changing their mind and why, or if the new position would be the right one.

 

This goes far beyond what is explained by the fact that they are in the midst of an election; there are Podesta emails going back to 2008. They span his time heading Obama’s transition team (no more election, just policy) and his entire 8 year term including Hillary’s 4 years as Secretary of State also far from an election. Nothing ever changes. There is a clear feeling that these people hold persons with “values” or “issues” they care about in contempt. They believe people are these stupid funny things that have to be coddled with agreeing with their “issue”; and that winners like them simply win. They think believing in the right type of law or government, like believing in gd, is absurdly stupid, they don’t think there is a right type of law or action nor would they waste their time trying to reach it. They think what matters is to win. People are simply the pawns in the game she is playing… and the point of the game is to win it.

 

Because of this, Hillary and her staff reserve their worse criticisms for people that actually believe in things. Ironically, they treat opponents, such Trump, as simply the “opposing team” in the game and don’t disparage them personally. They are in fact impressed with the kind of innovative game strategy Trump has used to garner support. During the primary season, they are eager for Trump to win since they believe he will be easier to defeat in a general election (though not all agree and they fear out loud that what happened to Jeb Bush who knew the game and had a $1 billion war chest could happen to them).

 

Once he is the candidate, they often discuss insults that could be thrown at him as part of the game, such as the expected “racist” and “devise” terms but they are never used honestly against him, nor is any other insult. The Hillary camp does not express the idea that Trump is actually a racist, nor even that this would be a bad thing to be, but simply express the idea that the little pawns in the game, don’t like racists so calling him that is a good game strategy.

 

The Hillary campaign doesn’t see, correctly or not, in Trump someone who believes in things opposing their beliefs, but rather sees another “winner” playing the game, and by gd they will not let him beat their own “winner”. A political rival which they do see as believing in stuff is Bernie Sanders, and boy they can’t stand that.

 

Some of the terms they use on Sanders and his supporters are “puritanical,” “pompous”, “naive”, “radical” and “dumb,” calling some “freaks,” who need to “get a life.”

 

The criticism is not framed in that he is further left than Hillary, although campaign co-chair Neera Tanden in one email does call them “crazy lefties”, the emails show the campaign continuously trying to prove to the “progressives”, the unions and other leftists that she is at least as left as Bernie Sanders. Rather, the honest criticism they throw at him and his supporters comes from the fact they cannot stand that he actually believes in the stuff that is coming out of his mouth.

 

The staff is divided into people that act just like Hillary, seeing things only through a political lens and caring only about perception and votes, and others who are more aggressively “progressive” in their suggestions. There are no “centrists” in Hillary’s camp, only extreme leftists and those who have no positions, only polls as gurus. The following of the guru polls creates the impression of a mainstream centrist leftism, but the private emails show much more extreme leftist positions and associations.

 

There is an important exception to the “we don’t believe in anything” environment in the Hillary camp. Her long time aide, and current vicechair of her 2016 campaign, Huma Abedin, clearly believes in one thing, hating Israel. Her emails and forwards on the subject are exhausting.

 

What is also very interesting is that it is impossible to find any praise of Hillary by any of her staff. While they are constantly trying to craft her and her message to win, and see all events that happen in the news cycle as either good or bad for this goal, there is never any discussion or even side comment on “WHY” Hillary should win. While you can find plenty of negative comments about her from her staff and close associates, (“suboptimal instincts”, “fish rots from the head”, “her mess”, unwilling to own up, scripted (while Bill is too “unscripted”), uninspiring, cold and unrelateable, perception problem of dishonesty (without any mention that it’s unwarranted), etc etc, it is hard to find a single compliment.

 

There is a strange feeling of symbiosis between the staff and Hillary. Hillary needs the staff to tell her what to say and do to win, and the staff needs her to have someone to tell what to say and do to win. Hillary seems to have value in her campaign merely as a name, a certain “brand” that has enough recognition to play this game with. And the staff sees themselves with near limitless power over what this empty pant suit will say and do. There is no concern with what their “leader” believes or wants. Hillary’s congressional testimony on Benghazi where she continuously claimed to know nothing and have decided nothing, leaving everything to the “security professionals” that she would not “second guess” may not have been that far off.

 

Certainly in campaigning, she leaves everything from where she is going to what position she will have on every issue, to how she will describe that position, to the “campaigning professionals”.

 

The few times where the staff is concerned that HRC will not go along with their suggestion, are related to personal ego, for example, apologizing for the handling of the emails. We never see however, the slightest indication that the campaign even considers the possibility that HRC will not want to accept a new position they seem the most beneficial nor backtrack on an old one. They know she will do as told, and she did.

 

The second main revelation in the emails is less surprising but more illegal. The degree of collusion between the campaign and friendly major media outlets calming to be institutions of journalistic integrity and not opinionated editorials, the Clinton Foundation, Donors (foreign and domestic), the White House, federal agencies such as the DOJ, and the Super PACs is shocking to witness and rife with felonies.

 

From a colluding friendly media that shares pieces for approval or editing before publishing, sharing of debate questions, and paying for access and special treatment by the Hillary State Dept for Donors of the Clinton Foundation, to apparent outright bribery in the FBI probe and illegal coordination with Super PACs, it’s all there. This stuff is less surprising but mostly highly unethical and often highly illegal. The only person so far who has had his freedom restricted to any of this is the editor of the outlet who brought us this revelations, Julian Assange. Unlikely that the same Obama FBI that let her off the hook for erasing 33,000 emails after they had been subpoenaed by congress will care about any of this either. The question is will the voters?

 

The emails are not without humor. The most ironic is:

 

On Oct 29, 2015, at 10:48 PM, Tony Carrk <tcarrk@hillaryclinton.com> wrote:

 

So the guy bankrolling the new super PAC that has an ad using her Benghazi testimony is talking with the candidate who is attacking us on Benghazi. Smells like coordination.

 

After reading a few hundred of their emails, reading one of them saying “Smells like coordination” would make anyone brake out in laughter. In any event, this email was in response to a William Mahoney who said he saw a Super PAC donor walking with Marcro Rubio (note that a “donor” to a Super PAC is not necessarily the same as the people running it, and “walking” is not necessarily coordination, unlike the many clear cases of coordination on the Democratic side revealed in their emails)

 

Coordination

In a separate May 2015 email Huma Abedin writes (to Podesta):

 

I agree with you, John. I think we focus hard on raising as much as we can and then throw the kitchen sink at everyone who we believe steps over the line, understanding that has limited impact.

 

Basically, let’s raise lots of money, apparently breaking the rules, and then let’s accuse everyone who even appears to step over the line at their side, even thought it won’t do much since apparently you can break the laws at will (she didn’t know that only applies to Democrats).

 

When of all people, Chelsea Clinton gets involved and is concerned about the conflicts of interest, she is called a “spoiled brat”.

 

On Hillary, her character and credentials as a “lefty”

• Herbet Sandler (a progressive, to put it kindly, billionaire is a correspondent with John Podesta.

He first assumes Hillary will be running when he writes Podesta in 2014 after seeing this article about Hillary on Israel:

From:hms@sandlerfoundation.org To: john.podesta@gmail.com Date: 2014-08-12 16:14 Subject: Israel’s new lawyer: Hillary Clinton – Opinion Israel News | Haaretz

 

Very disappointing. I guess it’s clear now she plans to run. I’m not looking forward to her other policy statements.

 

It should be noted, that although he does not specify, apparently the pro-palestinian Hillary appeared too pro-Israel for the likes of Herbet Sandler, who may have been born a Jew, but prefers extreme communism instead. He should have known better and understood that Hillary was just “appearing”, and remember that she is very versatile in her views, depending on audience and circumstance.

 

The Same Herbet Sandler on another occasion complained to Neera Tanden that on article on ThinkProgress was beneath his sensibilities. While Tanden tries to excuse it and promises to do better, Podesta defends the article. When Sandler responds:

 

“It’s not that I’m offended, which I’m not, but what’s this got to do with Think Progress and the issues it purports to raise. How is this relevant?”

 

Podesta replies:

 

“Gender and racial and booty equity.”

 

This is about a weighty a conversation about substantive as there is in the whole lot of emails.

 

• Of course, in an exchange between Sandler and his son (apparently), they let everyone know that the US is no longer a democracy, since the strings are pulled by billionaires such as them.

 

From: “Sandler, Jim” <james@sandlerfoundation.org<mailto:james@sandlerfoundation.org>> Date: August 24, 2014 at 5:43:34 AM EDT To: “Sandler, Herbert” <hms@sandlerfoundation.org<mailto:hms@sandlerfoundation.org>> Subject: Princeton Study: U.S. No

Longer An Actual Democracy  I guess it takes a study to point out the obvious.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-us-no-longer-democracy

 

• Neera Tanden once again gives an interesting insight into Clinton’s shortcomings.

“Everyone wants her to apologize,” Tanden says in an email to Podesta and Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton’s director of communications.

And she should. Apologies are like her Achilles heel. But she didn’t seem like a bitch in the interview. And she said the word sorry. She will get to a full apology in a few interviews.

 

Clinton’s description of herself as a moderate Democrat at a September 2015 event in Ohio angered Tanden. In a mail to Podesta, she asked why Clinton described herself as such, to which he replied that she “didn’t remember saying it. Not sure I believe her.” Tanden insists that the comment has made her job more difficult after

telling every reporter I know she’s actually progressive…

It worries me more that she doesn’t seem to know what planet we are all living in at the moment,

 

Media Collusion

 

Reuters reporter Mark Hosenball in April 2015 emailed John Podesta informing him about what appears to be an illegally obtained confidential document about the Benghazi Committee (which was investigating Hillary Clinton and the State Dept in relation to the Benghazi attacks). The Reuters “journalist” lets Podesta knows that if he feels it would be over the line for him (if he wants to keep his hands clean), he could suggest to him other avenues to get it to them.

 

On Apr 21, 2015 5:11 PM, <Mark.Hosenball@thomsonreuters.com> wrote:

 

I have run across a rather interesting document which outlines in detail the principal current objectives of the House Benghazi Committee, and was wondering if you might have a minute or two to discuss this. If you are anywhere near 1333 H in next day or two I might even show the document to you (I’m out on Thursday, however) though I am reluctant to hand out copies at this stage. It is a document which raises some questions about the bona fides of the committee’s investigation, rather than about anything specific a certain former SecState might have done. If this is something that you would not want to get involved in, if you had any alternative ideas as to who I ought to speak to I would welcome them. Hope all is well etc. All best & regards mh

 

Hosenball apparently overestimated Podesta’s sensibility to illegal campaign tactics, since he replied casually that:

 

That’s in a different lane with Kendall and Cheryl. Mind if I share this email with them?

 

Mark agrees and the email gets forward to Cheryl Mills, at top Clinton adviser and lawyer, and David Kendall, an attorney who has been arrested and convicted for voting registration crimes and started his career by defending death row inmates.

 

Obamacare:

 

Ann O’Leary, senior policy advisor to Hillary, wrote a lengthy memo on crafting her Obamacare positions, specifically regarding the “Cadillac Tax”. Being a policy advisor did not stop her from also ignoring the substance and speaking only in terms of votes, and being especially concerned about the Unions will and won’t accept.

 

Here are some excerpts:

 

In short, we are recommending that you call for repeal but go back to your 2008 position that workers over $250K not be exempt from paying taxes on their health care….It would  do little, however, to control health care consumption and costs.

 

There remains a divide among your advisors with the economic team interested in you offering a “fix it” approach (Option 3) in the memo and your political team very interested in you coming out for full repeal because of the union implications (Option 1). Several of your advisors – Neera and Chris, chief among them – offered this middle ground that Jake > and I thought could work (Option 2).

 

Subsequently, I’ve talked to Randi Weingarten who has been taking the > pulse of the unions in it. While she thinks they can live with the $250K > position, she thinks you don’t gain much from it and feels the most > important thing is that you get out there not only offering empathy for workers…

 

Hillary is forwarded the email and replies:

 

Given the politics now w bipartisan support including Schumer, I’ll support repeal w “sense of the Senate” that revenues would have to be > found. I’d be open to a range of options to do that. But we have to be > careful that the R version passes which begins the unraveling of the ACA.

 

Hard to make sense of her reply, on the face of it appears she is saying she will support repeal because that is what is popular now (no surprise there). But also surprisingly adds that she wants to make sure that the Republican version passes which will allow ACA (Obamacare) to unravel.

 

This could mean she wants it to unravel because she actually thinks it is bad, or in order to be able to blame it on the Republicans. It is a stretch but perhaps she wants it to die, by Republican hands to blame, and then be able to pass her own “Hillarycare” version.

 

In either event, it is clear that her staff knew what she was talking about and Jake Sullivan responds:

 

Your point on R version is key. Our Bernie contrast rests on defending ACA, so crucial to cast this as a fix and to be on the lookout for R  efforts to make this a Trojan Horse for broader dismantling of the ACA.

 

Politically, she needs to be SEEN as supporting Obamacare, thought her team really hope the Republicans will dismantle it. Typical in the sense that Hillary is being instructed to say what is most conducive to votes, but we are left wondering why it is that she wants Obamacare to fail.

 

Most likely, it has to do with the fact that they know its unsustainable and terrible, and they need it to be destroyed by Republican hands before it collapses on its own (just yesterday, the government has announced a new set of sharp premium increases and decreased competition and choice as insurers back out of obamacare and costs continue to climb), so that thereafter she can take another convenient then-popular position. But maybe this one time she was just right. Too bad she didn’t feel she could express her actual view and went with a lie as usual.

 

 

Syria, Iraq, ISIS

An email from Aug 17 2014 (from hrod17@clintonemail.com), 2 years after Hillary was no longer head of the State Dept, shows that Hillary apparently was still advising the clueless Obama administration on the mess they had created in the middle east by supporting a jihadist takeover everywhere (something I consistently warned about long before anyone in the media picked up on it).

The email, coming from the “other” secret email account, clearly was not written by Hillary, since it is too long, organized and has too many big words in it. It is clearly her forwarding more of Sidney Blumenthal, since it has all the tell-tale signs of his handiwork, from the

Note: Sources include Western intelligence, US intelligence and sources in the region. [By the way, shows another Hillary lie about never sending sensitive through her private server]

on the top to the curious spelling of “Basher al Assad”. Also, it’s his usual fluffed up meaningless language that does little than point out the obvious in hindsight.

It does however show some interesting revelations including:

3. In the past the USG, in an agreement with the Turkish General Staff, did not provide such heavy weapons to the Peshmerga, out of a concern that they would end up in the hands of Kurdish rebels inside of Turkey. The current situation in Iraq, not to mention the political environment in Turkey, makes this policy obsolete. Also this equipment can now be airlifted directly into the KRG zone.

Blumenthal may think policy is obsolete but it was Hillary’s State Dept policy and it has never been changed under Obama. The bending over backwards to appease Turkey, who itself has funded the jihadist insurgencies, at the expense of the Kurds never seems to amaze me (and I wrote about that often in the past as well) and is a misguided policy that even Israeli governments tend to embrace.

Headlines today are telling us about how the offensive against ISIS in Mosul is being bogged down by Turkish involvement and their objections to the Kurds.

The email also goes on to say:

…we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region. This effort will be enhanced by the stepped up commitment in the KRG. The Qataris and Saudis will be put in a position of balancing policy between their ongoing competition to dominate the Sunni world and the consequences of serious U.S. pressure.

 

I know Hillary didn’t write this email, and probably did not read it nor would she understand it if she did, but taking her on her word as she tells John Podesta that “this” (the content of the email) is what she “told them” (meaning the Obama administration), she must know it and agree with it. In that case, she is saying the US government is aware that Qatar and Saudi Arabia have supported and are supporting ISIS/ISIL and other radical sunni groups in the region (ironically as the US has), as I have also persistently wrote about for years.

The government and mainstream media meanwhile, have admitted rich Gulf donors may be doing it, but not the royal governments themselves.  In the memo, she encourages the US to do something about that to stop it, but makes no mention that anything has ever been done to date.

The knowledge that Qatar and Saudi Arabia fund ISIS and other jihadists, did not make Hillary hesitant about having the Clinton Foundation being funded by them as well. I suppose it would be odd to have had  Clinton State Department pressuring Saudi Arabia and Qatar while at the same time receiving funds to the tune of about $30 million for her Clinton groups (about $5 million from Qatar, and $25 from Saudi Arabia). A Saudi Prince bragged that the Saudis were responsible for a third of her total campaign funds.

 

 

Email Scandals

In an email thread from March 2015, Hillary Clinton’s PR team discusses innovative – and potentially lighthearted – ways to respond to the private email server scandal.

“I wanted to float idea of HRC making a joke about the email situation,” Clinton’s Director of Communications, Jennifer Palmieri, starts the discussion.

Her Press Secretary, Nick Merril responds: “I don’t think it’s nuts if we can come up with the right thing. But it could also be nuts…”

Deputy Communications Director Kristina Schake offers her take, writing: “I think it would be good for her to show some humor. This is her crowd so the response would be great. Also Dan is looking to add more humor overall so more jokes are welcome too.”

However, Clinton’s PR firm, Grunwald Communications, steps in with long time adviser Mandy Grunwald offering a sober assessment: “We don’t know what’s in the emails, so we are nervous about this. Might get a big laugh tonight and regret it when content of emails is disclosed.”

On Aug 12 2015, Neera Tanden asked Podesta in an email titled:

Subject: Re: Why doesn’t she just turn the server over to a third party at this point?

isn’t it going to leak out of the FBI anyway?

Podesta replied tersely:

Done so think about something else.

 

In one of the rare instances of HRC not listening to her staff, since it involved accountability, taking responsibility and being truthful, staff urged her to make a big deal of turning the server over in order to get passed the scandal, as Jennifer Palmieri wrote in an Aug 8 2015 exchange:

As you all know, I had hoped that we could use the ‘server moment’ as an opportunity for her to be viewed as having take a big step to deal with the email problem that would best position us for what is ahead. It is clear that she is not in same place (unless John has a convo with her and gets her in a different place),

On August 21, the staff was crafting her statement about the emails, which included several lies such as the claim that HRC did not send or receive classified information on the private server.

Palmieri was troubled by the first draft, and wrote:

Still think it is way too long and has too many tangents that are distracting and press will chase,”

Also I don’t think it has our core argument that nothing she sent or rec’d [received] was classified at the time. I will make more edits and send back around.

After receiving an updated version, Palmieri wrote:

Robby’s version is better, but still focuses on the Blackberry, which is weird and press will find suspicious.

Interesting to note that whatever the tangents to chase were that Palmieri worried about, the “core argument” she refers to was flatly false, and declared so by the FBI.

 

Later on August 22, 2015, Neera Tanden and Podesta have a candid exchange about HRC’s refusal to apologize. They are not used to the candidate not listening to them, but when it comes to apologizing, it apparently actually happens.

From Tanden’s email:

But her inability to just do a national interview and communicate genuine feelings of remorse and regret is now, I fear, becoming a character problem (more so than honesty).

People hate her arrogant, like her down. It’s a sexist context, but I think it’s the truth. I see no downside in her actually just saying, look, I’m sorry. I think it will take so much air out of this.

She always sees herself bending to “their” will when she hands over information, etc. But the way she has to bend here is in the remorse. Not the “if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t do it.” A real feeling of – this decision I made created a mess and I’m sorry I did that.

Podesta could not agree more:

 

Jen and I are in the same place. Trying to figure out how to get her there and best way to execute.

 

Money in Politics

 

This was one is great. A Citigroup executive basically hand-picked the Obama cabinet. Michael Froman, a then Citigroup executive and lawyer who is now Obama’s US Trade Representative, sent Obama and team an email about the cabinet and staff (still using his Citigroup email address fromanm@citi.com) over a month before the 2008 election!

 

A list of African American, Latino and Asian American candidates, broken down by Cabinet/Deputy and Under/Assistant/Deputy Assistant level, plus a list of Native American, Arab/Muslim American and Disabled American candidates.

 

Apparently Obama wasn’t as worried about placing women in senior-level positions but Froman decided to offer up some suggestions anyway.

While you did not ask for this, I prepared and attached a similar document on women.

The email goes on:

At the risk of being presumptuous, I also scoped out how the Cabinet-level appointments might be put together

File attachments are included in the email.

Turns out Froman wasn’t being presumptuous at all, sure he can put together the Cabinet, no one else seems to know how to make list of names on MS Word and send as attachment.

As the New Republic reported:

 

The cabinet list ended up being almost entirely on the money. It correctly identified Eric Holder for the Justice Department, Janet Napolitano for Homeland Security, Robert Gates for Defense, Rahm Emanuel for chief of staff, Peter Orszag for the Office of Management and Budget, Arne Duncan for Education, Eric Shinseki for Veterans Affairs, Kathleen Sebelius for Health and Human Services, Melody Barnes for the Domestic Policy Council, and more. For the Treasury, three possibilities were on the list: Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Timothy Geithner.

 

This was October 6. The election was November 4. And yet Froman, an executive at Citigroup, which would ultimately become the recipient of the largest bailout from the federal government during the financial crisis, had mapped out virtually the entire Obama cabinet, a month before votes were counted. And according to the Froman/Podesta emails, lists were floating around even before that.

 

Many already suspected that Froman, a longtime Obama consigliere, did the key economic policy hiring while part of the transition team. We didn’t know he had so much influence that he could lock in key staff that early, without fanfare, while everyone was busy trying to get Obama elected. The WikiLeaks emails show even earlier planning; by September the transition was getting pre-clearance to assist nominees with financial disclosure forms.

 

Way to end Wall Street Influence on DC Obama.

 

Staff Infighting

Mr Podesta says Blumenthal lacks either “self awareness or self respect”, adding: “Will you promise to shoot me if I ever end up like that?”

In another exchange from November 2014, Philippe Reines, Mrs Clinton’s veteran aide, subject headings of emails that don’t reflect its contents.

“I’m not living like this for the next two years,” he writes.

In a November 2011 email exchange, Huma Abedin, has a fraught exchange with a Clinton Foundation executive about space allocation in a New York office. In another email, Abedin, reinforcing how much they insulate Hillary, talked about the dangers of providing information to journalists. “Can we survive not answering questions from press at message events,” she wondered. Podesta said that avoiding journalists was a bad idea, describing it as suicidal.

 

• Phillippe Reines, long time Clington aide and the guy who ended up playing Donald Trump in HRC’s debate prep got into charged email exchange that ended up with him being fired.

It started when Podesta was forwarded Reines’ reactions to an article about Hillary and staff using private email accounts for government business (which ended up being completely true). Reines reacted very aggressively and the email subject line was

Phillippe going off the rails, FYI.

Podesta called the email “priceless,” adding “Phillipe is the only person about whom you’re torn between patting him on the back and trying to get him committed to Bellevue.”

Neera Tanden, told him in an email that she was “not torn at all” and that she thought Reines had a “disorder.”

Just four days later, Podesta and Reines wound up in an email spat about leaks that ultimately ended in Podesta telling Reines that he would not have a role in Clinton’s presidential campaign.

 

“Ok, this has gone too far. The email below is from Craig to Nick to me where someone knows an interview with Andrea was on the table,” Reines wrote. “The Andrea part especially should only have been known to 10-12 people, 3 of whom are John, Cheryl & me.”

Podesta, fresh off reading Reines’ email to the Free Beacon, included Clinton on his response to Reines and told him to “stop.”

“You got to stop this,” Podesta wrote. “The press is trading in rumors that can easily originate in their own newsrooms. If someone wanted to leak juicy tidbits, they have a lot more to work with than our press planning.”

“If we are going to be at each others throats before we start, we are going nowhere,” he wrote.

Reines defended himself, and Podesta went on to say:

I am happy to fire someone for leaking whether they did or they didn’t just to make the point, but let’s try to get through the next few days

Fire someone just to make a point… nice Podesta, I am sure all of you progressives agree with the current laws (and would support strengthening them much further!) that put people in serious  legal trouble if they did something like that.

 

 

Israel

The Hillary camp can’t even make a strong opposition to BDS (which is the boycott and divestment efffort against Israel) because they don’t want to offend liberals (including liberal anti-Israel Jews) and European socialists. As usual, they include jabs at Netanyahu, and mention that HRC may not want to go completely anti Israel either since she needs Haim Saban’s money. By the way, I don’t know what Saban’s problem is but he should really learn a thing or two about the people he backs. The right side could use the help.

From:jake.sullivan@gmail.com To: seizenstat@cov.com  Date: 2015-06-21 16:15 Subject: Re: BDS

Although I know Hillary is close to Haim Saban, his partnership with Sheldon Adelson, who has a Likud agenda, may not be the best offensive against BDS.

Obviously, she should not in any way criticize this initiative, quite the contrary. But she should stress the critical importance of AVOIDING MAKING ISRAEL A PARTISAN ISSUE.

…I think it is important for Hillary not to alienate or criticize liberal Democrats and liberal Jews, but to make the point that joining the BDS campaign is NOT the appropriate way to respond to concerns about Israeli settlement policy,…

 

• On March 18 2015 Podesta wrote Paul Begala on on whether he had any insider info on Benjamin Netanyahu’s election victory in Israel.

From: John Podesta [john.podesta@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 2015 11:24 AM To: Begala, Paul Subject: Got a take On Israel other than the obvious?

 

It turns out that this is due to the fact Paul Begala, a long time Clinton ally and CNN Democratic pundit, (he was counselor the President during Bill Clinton’s administration) who is a frequent correspondent with John Podesta in these emails, had been hired by the major leftist Israel party led by Ytzhak “Buji” Herzog to oppose Benjamin Netanyahu.

Judging from his email to Podesta, it is no wonder Begala did not do very well in helping Herzog. It is worth reproducing in full:

 

Just as patterns of immigration are moving the US left, patterns of immigration are moving Israel right. I have never seen anything like Bibi’s furious surge to the right in the last 4 days. Nothing like it in America. He had robo-calls calling the President “Hussein Obama, the Muslim,” he had ads saying the Arabs will vote in droves. He accused Herzog of wanting to divide Jerusalem. Bibi did not win because of Iran. He won because of race. He cannibalized the smaller parties on the right: Bennett’s Jewish Home lost 4 seats, Shas lost 4 seats, Lieberman’s party lost 5 seats, United Torah lost 1. That is a 14 seat decline on the right. Bibi gained 10.

The guy to watch is Moshe Kahlon. Slightly more moderate than Bibi, formed his own party and took 10 seats. Might have done better but Bibi doctored an endorsement Kahlon gave him two years ago and made it look like it happened two days before the election.

All the smart guys in Tel Aviv thought Bibi was having a nervous breakdown. In the US you could never get away with those kind of racist appeals. But, man, did it work.

On our side, we focused on trying to hold down Lapid’s Yesh Atid, but never really attacked him – a mistake. We also did zero rallies in the final days – Buji doesn’t like them and he is not a rah-rah guy. This gave all the bandwagon effect to Bibi. I am still half-wasted from my hospital stay, and am deeply depressed that I failed such a good guy in such a big race.

 

The letter shows complete ignorance of Israeli politics, and his viewing of it through American glasses.

Race is a USA issue; it is completely absent in the Israeli political sphere. Nationalism is the issue in Israel, and all major Jewish parties, including the one he was supposedly helping to win, claim to be nationalistic ie Zionist. Buji’s block in fact called itself the “Zionist” camp. There is no argument there. In Israel the population is almost entirely either Arab or Jewish, with the large majority Jewish. Nationalism is difficult to explain in American terms, since it is likewise mostly absent in the USA, and not politically correct.

All the major parties in Israel, left and right, believe in the right for Israel, as a Jewish state, to exist in its ancient biblical homeland of Israel. The Arab population by overwhelming proportions does not. They largely either boycott the elections as part of their protest to Israel’s very existence, or vote for one of the couple of smaller Arab parties which have NEVER been part of a ruling coalition and openly declare their opposition to the state of Israel even while sitting in its Knesset (parliament).

The election between left and right is fought within the Jewish Zionist parties, ie within the Jewish population, not between the Jews and the Arabs. The Jewish parties differ most importantly in their very approach to how to literally COMBAT the Arab threat to Israel’s existence (the left usually wanting more appeasement, the right wanting victory over them).

The Arab population has citizenship and a vote due Israel’s commitment to “democratic” principles (despite all the claims of “apartheid” to the contrary), but this is a population hostile to the very existence of the country, not a different ethnic constituency like you have in the USA.

True in recent times there have been some changes to this pattern, and some of the Arab population has started to vote for leftist “Zionist” Jewish parties in order to help the left win over the right (the left gives the Arabs more land and believes in appeasement policies towards them), but this is still far from the norm and it represents a mere tactic by the Arab population, not an actual belief in Israel and Zionism. And yes as Bibi points out it it is why all the more important for Israeli Jews to vote right.

Nevertheless, a closer analogy to “race” in Amierca would be wide variety of Jewish communities that live in the country, for example Ashkenazi Jews which mostly immigrated from Europe or Mizrahi Jews that immigrated to Israel from Arab countries (in both cases, “escaped” might be a better term than “immigrated”). Now you are talking about different “ethnic” groups that share in the common values of the nation and at least want the nation to exist.

The Arabs for their part, are also divided into different tribes and clans, which hail from very different places, but these differences are virtually non-existent when it comes to national politics. All Israeli Jews feel they are of the same “race” in American terms.

What Begala means by “immigration patterns” pushing Israel to the right is hard to figure out. Certainly immigration patterns in the US are pushing the US to the left, that is for sure, but what immigration patterns in Israel?

The European Jews (Ashkenazim) immigrated to Israel in large part before the establishment of the state in 1948 including during the years after the holocaust. Most oriental (Mizrahi) Jews came during the subsequent years throughout the 50’s. Bot of those immigration waves are done.

Certainly no Arabs are immigrating to Israel (though they of course, multiply naturally), and very few Jews are doing so; no places in the world left where large communities of Jews are endanger and fell the need to emigrate. The closest thing to this the uptick of French Jews immigrating to Israel in recent years due to anti-semitic violence in France caused by their own massive muslim immigration problem.

So taking Begala at his word for this example, though many of his examples were false, of course what Bibi says about Arabs would be ludicrous in US politics. White, Black, Hispanic  and Asian Americans are not in a war against each other (at least so we are told), and they all believe in the principle of the USA, it’s constitution and it’s promise of liberty.

Israel is another ball game, the small Jewish population is surrounded a Muslim population that badly wants its destruction; most of those hundreds of millions of Muslims are outside Israel’s borders (stretching from Morocco to Pakistan and beyond) and one or two is within her borders.

It speaks to Buji’s judgement that he hired this guy to advise him on Israeli policy or even election strategies, and it is yet another example of these American leftists’ disdain for Netanyahu and anyone else advocating a strong Israel. For all their talk that foreign governments (Putin) should not interfere in US elections, it is clear that if Putin wanted to interfere in USA issues, all he had to do was donate some money to the Clinton Foundation. As far as meddling with other governments and their election, Hillary and their team are everywhere, from doing their best to derail Bibi Netanyahu, to destroying the entire Middle East leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands and massive waves of refugees flooding into Europe.

More to be published soon…

including:

Obama knowing about Hillary’s private email

collusion with media, the DOJ and FBI

more hating on Netanyahu

access and influence by rich donors

coordination with Super PACs

Clinton Foundation selling government favors including

Uranium rights to Russia and

post earthquake Haitian contracts

Gender pay gap in the Clinton Foundation

Podesta wishes San Bernadino shooter was white christian rather than islamic terrorist.

HRC “dreams” of Open Borders

Disparaging remarks on Catholics

Progressive Arabs urging HRC and her camp to utter the words “radical islamic terrorism”, it exists!

12 million dollar donation from the King of Morocco to Clinton Foundation, HRC sends Bill and Chelsea instead of her, as she readies to launch campaign.

and more…