"Not Monica!"

#NotMonica pic.twitter.com/KzxowBtutQ

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) September 7, 2020

Giuliani on Biden "This is an ongoing criminal enterprise!" Matt Gaetz on te Clintons: I don't know why they feel the need to relive their worst experiences and their strangest grievances. I prefer the Kardashians!"

Jessie Watters on Biden: "If he gets into the White House, he's not going to be calling the shots."

Managing his anxieties

Premiering Friday on Hulu is a four-part documentary entitled Hillary. In it, Bill Clinton finally admits to a sexual relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky. Watch the trailer and read more here.

Bill, Hillary and Chelsea visited Epstein regularly at his New Mexico ranch

Chris White reports in the Daily Mail,

Bill and Hillary Clinton stayed at Jeffrey Epstein's notorious 'baby-making ranch' almost every year after they left the White House, according to the disgraced financier's estate manager.

The former president was Epstein's closest 'celebrity mate' and the Clintons, along with daughter Chelsea, visited Zorro Ranch 'a whole bunch of times', a former contractor who ran the IT system at the property told DailyMailTV in an exclusive interview.

The family visited the 10,000-acre estate in the New Mexico desert often, but never stayed in the main house.

Instead, the Clinton family bunked down in a special cowboy-themed village created by Epstein, which is a mile south of his own luxury mountaintop villa. They'd use one of the two guest houses, which look like they're straight out of the 19th century.

...The ranch is one of several Epstein's homes where underage girls were flown in from all around the world.

The New York Times claimed the convicted pedophile confided in scientists that he planned to impregnate up to 20 women at a time at the ranch to improve the human race with his genes.

Read more here.

I guess I'll have to erase a few posts

hat-tip Bookworm

Is he really that Machiavellian?

In PJ Media, Jim Treacher raises an intriguing question about what may have been the true purpose of his meeting with Loretta Lynch on the tarmac in Arizona. Read it here.

CDC: People With Dirt On Clintons Have 843% Greater Risk Of Suicide

According to the satirical blog The Babylon Bee,

ATLANTA, GA – According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control released on Thursday, people with inside, compromising knowledge of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s financial and political dealings are 843% more likely to commit suicide.

“We’ve never seen a single risk factor cause a spike of this magnitude,” a CDC spokesperson told reporters. “Interestingly, in spite of their increased suicide risk, people with dirt on the Clintons rarely show any warning signs of suicide, and they never leave a suicide note.”

Remarking about how abnormal it is, the spokesman again stressed the significance of the data.

“Therefore, we advise any American with detrimental information about Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, or the Clinton Foundation to forget about it as quickly as possible to avoid a greatly increased probability of taking your own life,” he cautioned.

“And—I swear—that’s all we know.”

Connecting Some Dots

I don't believe I have ever linked to a reddit.com article before. Someone calling herself or himself u/lonestarbeliever has written something called Connecting Some Dots. If you like trying to connect dots, I recommend you read the article here.

Wisdom

Victor Davis Hanson asks,

Is there not wisdom in being able to drop an 80-foot pine tree with a chain saw within a foot of the mark, or to take apart a hydraulic ram in an hour, or to steer a bulldozer on a narrow uphill road? Can MSNBC news reader Brian Williams tell the truth any better than the Michigan lathe operator? Is Lois Lerner, formerly of the IRS and now enjoying a multimillion-dollar retirement, more likely to file an honest tax return than the Wyoming rancher, or would you feel safer knowing that Press Secretary Josh Earnest was working on a high-voltage wire outside your front door?

Or is wisdom sometimes gained by losing the polish on one’s hands? Is the wrinkled man’s face as trustworthy as the thirty-something’s peach fuzz or the Botox grin of the middle-aged metrosexual on the evening news or the pollster who assures you that the election has already been decided before the voting? In this year of weariness with the elite and their definition of success and wisdom, lots of such questions are being asked.

...What good did grifting for all those hundreds of millions of dollars do for the Clintons in their sunset years? Do they look healthier and haler for their frenzied pursuit of lucre? Did they gain greater respect and acclaim, the richer they became, or are they resting in peace with the assurance of lives well lived? Are they finally deemed successful for scamming that last $50 million in their pay-for-play scheming?

Trump is criticized now that he might be too soft on Putin. Perhaps. Yet it was not Trump, but the Ivy League Trinity of Obama, Clinton, and Kerry who “reset” George W. Bush’s reset sanctions against Putin, who canceled already-planned missile defense with the Czechs and the Poles; it was Clinton who pushed a ridiculous plastic reset button; and Obama who in a hot-mic quip stealthily promised Dmitry Medvedev that he would be more reasonable with Vladimir Putin after his reelection, who invited the Russians into the Middle East after a 40-year hiatus, who mocked Mitt Romney when the latter suggested that Russia was a threat to America, who loudly announced faux “step-over” line ultimatums to the Russians; it was Clinton who in pay-for-play greed opened up North American uranium resources to the Russians, and Obama who personally mocked Putin as an adolescent school cut-up even as he appeased Putin at every turn.

For now, Donald Trump has proved that the animal cunning necessary to survive in the jungle of Manhattan real estate — duplicitous and venal politicians, all-powerful unions, incompetent and vindictive regulators, fair-weather bankers and investors, and dozens of special-interest crusaders — trumps the definition of traditional political wisdom: finding a young hip graduate from the right school with the right résumé to hire the right people to run the right sort of campaign. Trump instinctively sensed that to win, Republicans would have to recapture the Rust Belt states, and to do that, he would have to campaign on illegal immigration, jobs, trade, and the economy.

If “Make America Great Again” is not to end up like the banal “Hope and Change,” if the Republican Congress of 2017 is not to wither away like the Democratic Congress of 2009, and if the glitzy promises of 2016 are not to prove as empty as the deceptions of Obamacare, the Iran Deal, the stimulus, and “balancing the budget,” then Trump will have to reflect on the nature of true wisdom: Trust instinct as much as conventional wisdom, never forget who elects the politician, remember that cheap praise is fickle and transient and those who traffic in it disappear in extremis, quietly do what is promised to those who were promised a change, ignore the venom of critics, and do not gloat over successes — and move silently, quickly, and, above all, modestly.

Do all that, and Trump would prove wiser than the more erudite who hate him.

Read more here.

Pseudo scandal

From Return of Kings,

...the media completely ignores the fact Gennifer Flowers said Rapin’ Bill Clinton told her Hillary “had eaten more pussy than he had.”

...If they don’t destroy Trump with this pseudo-scandal, look for the measures to take him out to become even more outlandish.

What accounts for the Clintons' inordinate greed?

Victor Davis Hanson asks at National Review,

Wall Street profiteering aside, why, while decrying soaring tuition and student indebtedness, would Hillary Clinton charge the underfunded University of California, Los Angeles, a reported $300,000 — rather than, say, $50,000 — for a 30-minute chat?

...The Clintons discovered that one could become very rich from a host of sources and still be considered quite progressive; indeed, liberal pieties both assuaged any guilt about one’s privilege and in a more public manner provided exemption from the logical ramifications of one’s own redistributionist rhetoric.

After a decade of loud liberal pronouncements, a Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg, or Steyer brother is likely to be seen as coolly progressive rather than inordinately wealthy and exploitative. So the Clintons had unprecedented opportunities to shoulder-rub with liberal financial titans without suffering the class invective reserved for the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson.

Former vice president Al Gore is emblematic of the progressive contradictions in leveraging politics to get rich. After winning the popular vote in 2000 and losing the presidency, he discovered that the road to multimillionaire status was to mouth green and progressive pieties while monetizing his political contacts and celebrity among new networks of the global liberal rich. Fearing that new capital-gains taxes of the sort he supported would kick in, Gore then rushed to sell a failed cable station to the often anti-Semitic Al Jazeera, a Middle East media conglomerate funded from the carbon-exporting wealth of the right-wing royal autocracy in Qatar.

...the Clintons had found a way to exploit the idea that both of them would return to the White House. That reality gave them access to quid pro quo opportunities, often funneled through a philanthropic foundation, of a sort unknown to any past American president. Most important, the Clintons had long since discovered that public outrage at their impropriety could be dismissed as the empty and vindictive charges of a “vast right-wing conspiracy,” be they allegations of sexual assault or criticisms of Bill’s becoming the highest-paid “chancellor” in the history of higher education, hired by private for-profit Laureate University at some $4 million a year.

But if the Clintons’ opportunities for lucre were unique — in both what the couple had to sell and the huge resources of those who wished to buy — and if they could peddle myths that they were perennial victims of right-wing witch hunts, still, what accounts for their inordinate greed? Why not settle for a fortune of $50 million — in Obama’s formulation that “at some point you’ve made enough money” — rather than risk the public opprobrium of Bill’s globetrotting shakedowns or Hillary’s efforts to hide personal e-mails that were tangential to her job as secretary of state? Their previous embarrassments, from the mundane to the existential (Whitewater, the Clinton Foundation troubles, writing used underwear off as IRS deductions, the all-but-impossible odds of making a $100,000 profit in cattle futures from a $1,000 initial investment, etc.), all reflect a nonstop drive for lucre.

...The Clinton litany of whiny victimization and excuse-making reflects that sense of entitlement — one not uncommon among academics, journalists, and politicians who believe that those in the business world hardly deserve to enjoy more opulence than do those who are more refined and cultured. In sum, the Clintons left the presidency at a historic moment of globalized wealth creation, especially in fields considered progressive and green. They were unique in that, unlike other retiring first families, who could offer wealthy profiteers little more than nostalgic signed group portraits, they could provide an avenue to the buying of influence in a second Clinton presidency. They felt no shame about their drive for riches, not just because they were liberals who sacrificed for the underprivileged and therefore deserved their belated rewards, but also because they were convinced that, as correct-thinking elites, they needed a vast fortune commensurate with their sense of self-worth.

For now, the Clintons again have avoided the final wages of the classical sequence of overweening greed (koros) leading to arrogance and disdain (hubris) descending into a sort of recklessness (ate) and ultimately earning divine retribution (nemesis). But the tragedian Sophocles reminds us that for such people there is never self-reflection or enough money — and thus nemesis is still on the Clinton horizon.

Read more here.

Winners and losers

I don't know if this is a brilliant prediction, or just wishful thinking. I keep seeing this year's election as similar to 1972. The Watergate story broke that summer, but Nixon won every state except Mondale's Minnesota. Then, for the next year and a half, the Watergate hearings and journalists like Woodward and Bernstein relentlessly gave us a glimpse into the corruption of Nixon and his team, culminating in Nixon's resignation in August of 1974.

The same could happen this year. The next Clinton scandal to be uncovered may be the Clinton Foundation. Are there any Woodwards and Bernsteins still out there?

"It's our job top steer away from the Clinton's past"

Aleister reports at Gateway Pundit

John Dickerson, the political director of CBS News, was recently interviewed by Stephen Colbert who asked if unpleasant aspects of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s past are fair game for the election.

His answer was stunning.

Via Truth Revolt:

CBS News Political Director: ‘Our Job’ to Steer Away from the Clintons’ Past

News political director John Dickerson told Stephen Colbert that part of a journalist’s job when it comes to covering Bill and Hillary Clinton is to steer conversations away from their pasts.

This stunning admission came Wednesday night in New York City in a live interview that took audience questions. A question surfaced about Bill Clinton’s past and how that could affect Hillary’s chances in the presidential election.

Read more here.

Motives

Greg Campbell reminds us at Politistick,

If the left is saying something nice about anybody who could remotely be called a Republican, we should stop and analyze the situation and scrutinize motives immediately.

He is referring to the fact that some Republicans are encouraging Mitt Romney to get in the presidential race. Similarly, tonight on Steve Deace's radio show Steve reminded us how the co-hosts of Morning Joe on MSNBC were rooting for Donald Trump in the primaries, but now that he is the presumptive nominee, they are suddenly finding things to dislike about Trump.

In related news, Leon Wolf at Red State points out that although Donald Trump is now calling Hillary an enabler of Bill Clinton, Donald Trump also enabled Bill in the nineties.

if Trump’s defense is that he was being a “true friend” to Bill Clinton and standing up for him regardless of whether the accusations that he was a rapist and serial sexual harasser were true, why isn’t that an even more compelling defense for Hillary Clinton? I mean, after all, she was married to Bill Clinton.

If it’s somehow praiseworthy for Donald Trump to have stuck by his buddy Bill Clinton regardless of the facts, why isn’t it even more praiseworthy for Hillary Clinton to have done the same for her husband? Why, when she does it, is it evidence that she’s an enabler and hates women, but when Trump does it, it’s evidence that he’s just a good friend?

A friendly bond

H.W. Bush gave Bill Clinton a "heads up" that Jeb was planning to explore a run for president. Mike Allen reports in Politico:

Bill Clinton is already deeply engaged in the campaign, warning that Jeb Bush is a real threat, while New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is probably just a sideshow.

The former president got a “heads-up” from the camp of President George H.W. Bush a few days before Jeb Bush made his surprise Facebook announcement in December that he would “actively explore” a campaign. The two former presidents have developed a friendly bond, partly because of their work together on earthquake relief for Haiti.

Read more of the juicy political details here.

Thanks to Jim Geraghty at National Review, who adds, "With all due respect to the distinguished Bush family, will members of that family be giving the Clinton family a heads-up on all of the key maneuvers during the campaign? The elder Bush is a perfect gentleman, but his son will be campaigning in a political culture and competing against an opponent that eats up perfect gentlemen for lunch."

Our populist progressives

Victor Davis Hanson asks:

What does a $200,000 Ivy League education or a graduate degree really get you any more? In the sophisticated world of our political and highly credentialed elites, there are 57 states. Atlantic Coast cities are said to lie along the Gulf of Mexico; after all, they are down there somewhere in the South. The Malvinas become the Maldives — Ma- with an s at the end seems close enough. Corps-men serve in the military (as zombies?). Medgar Evans was a civil-rights icon, but you know whom we mean. President Roosevelt addressed the nation on television after the stock-market crash in 1929 — well, he would have, had he been president then and if only Americans had had televisions in their homes. And how are we to know that what we read from celebrity authors is not just made up or plagiarized, whether a Maureen Dowd column or a Doris Kearns Goodwin book?

It is hard to guess on any given summer weekend which populist progressive family — the Obamas, the Clintons, the Kerrys, the Gores — will be ensconced on what particular Hamptons, Nantucket, or Martha’s Vineyard beach, rubbing shoulders with just the sort of Silicon Valley or Wall Street new zillionaires who during work hours are supposed to be the evil “1 percent” and “fat cats” who need to be forced to pay their “fair share.”

Al Gore, like Trimalchio, does not mutter a word without revealing his ignorance — or hypocrisy. Over the last 15 years, the planet has not heated up, and the science of global warming is not established, which is why the nomenclature had to change from global warming to climate change to climate chaos in order to account for too much bothersome wet, snowy, and cold weather. The reconciler, who became a near-billionaire both hyping global warming and selling medieval-style indulgences as antidotes, now claims those who disagree with him are comparable to fascists and racists. All this comes from a wheeler-dealer who made big money damning fossil fuels only to sell a failing cable station to an anti-Semitic, anti-American fascistic enterprise, fueled by the millions garnered from the vast export of oil and gas from the Arabian peninsula. And to complete Gore’s Trimalchian man-of-the-people profile, he rushed the sale in hopes of beating the new, higher capital-gains taxes that he had been urging for lesser folk — sort of like progressive John Kerry buying and berthing his grand new yacht in Rhode Island to avoid the high excise and sales taxes in his home state of Massachusetts.

Read more here.

Electing President Jarrett

Roger L. Simon writes:

Blood Feud, Ed Klein’s new book on the Clintons and the Obamas currently rocketing to the top of the Amazon best seller list even before its official publication day, is a lurid, irresponsible work of yellow journalism filled with suppositions, inaccuracies, myriad anonymous sources, made-up dialogue and (often extreme) bias.

In other words, it is essentially like your average front page story in the New York Times.

But unlike the Times, Klein gets it essentially right about his subject — the Clintons and the Obamas despise each other.

Lurid as they may be, Klein’s insider profiles of those who lead us often make you think of serious matters more than many “serious” and dry political books. What we have here is a portrait of narcissism gone berserk. And maybe that’s what most politics is. Who would want to go through the ordeal of running for national office but someone with a serious narcissistic personality disorder? Perhaps the job of us voters (and pundits) is to separate the good narcissists from the bad narcissists.

That’s not an easy task. Barack Obama’s brand of narcissism seemed quite attractive to many early on with all its soaring talk of hope and change. Voters had no idea this man had only scant interest in the nitty-gritty task of governing. And the person they were really electing, as Blood Feud makes abundantly clear, was someone almost none of them had then heard of and most still haven’t — President Jarrett.

Please read more here.

The President's Secret Service

Here are some excerpts from Ronald Kessler's book In the President's Secret Service. Thanks to The Conservative Angle blog and Before Its News.

JOHN & JACQUELINE KENNEDY
*A philanderer of the highest order. *
*She ordered the kitchen help to save all the left-over wine during a State dinner, mixed it with fresh wine and served again during the next White House occasion.*

LYNDON & LADYBIRD JOHNSON
*Another philanderer of the highest order. In addition, LBJ was as crude as the day is long. Both JFK and LBJ kept a lot of women in the White House for extramarital affairs and both had set up early warning systems to alert them if/when their wives were nearby. Both were promiscuous and oversexed men.*
*She was either naive or just pretended to not know about her husband’s many liaisons.*

RICHARD & PAT NIXON
*A “moral” man but very odd, weird, paranoid. He had a horrible relationship with his family and was almost a recluse.*
*She was quiet most of the time.*

GERALD & BETTY FORD
*A true gentlemen who treated the Secret Service with respect and dignity. He had a great sense of humor. *
*She drank a lot!*

JIMMY & ROSALYN CARTER
*A complete phony who would portray one picture of himself to public and very different in private e.g. would be shown carrying his own luggage but the suitcases were always empty. He kept empty ones just for photo ops. He wanted people to see him as pious and a non-drinker but he and his family drank alcohol a lot! He had disdain for the Secret Service and was very irresponsible with the “football” with nuclear codes. He didn’t think it was a big deal and would keep military aides at a great distance. Often did not acknowledge the presence of Secret Service personnel assigned to serve him.*
*She mostly did her own thing.*

RONALD & NANCY REAGAN
*The real deal, moral, honest, respectful and dignified. They treated Secret Service and everyone else with respect and honor, thanked everyone all the time. He took the time to know everyone on a personal level. One favorite story was early in his Presidency when he came out of his room with a pistol tucked on his hip. The agent in charge asked: “Why the pistol, Mr. President?” He replied, “In case you boys can’t get the job done, I can help.” It was common for him to carry a pistol. When he met with Gorbachev, he had a pistol in his briefcase.
*She was very nice but very protective of the President and the Secret Service was often caught in the middle. She tried hard to control what he ate. He would say to the agent, “Come on, you gotta help me out.” The Reagans drank wine during State dinners and special occasions only otherwise they shunned alcohol. The Secret Service could count on one hand the times they were served wine during family dinner. For all the fake bluster of the Carters, the Reagans were the ones who lived life as genuinely moral people.*

GEORGE H. & BARBARA BUSH
*Extremely kind and considerate, always respectful. Took great care in making sure the agents’ comforts were taken care of. They even brought them meals. One time she brought warm clothes to agents standing outside at Kennebunkport. One was given a warm hat and, when he tried to say “no thanks” even though he was obviously freezing, the President said “Son, don’t argue with the First Lady. Put the hat on.” He was the most prompt of the Presidents. He ran the White House like a well-oiled machine.*
*She ruled the house and spoke her mind.*

BILL & HILLARY CLINTON
*Presidency was one giant party. Not trustworthy. He was nice mainly because he wanted everyone to like him but to him life is just one big game and party. Everyone knows about his sexuality.*
*She is another phony. Her personality would change the instant cameras were near. She hated with open disdain the military and Secret Service. She was another who felt people were there to serve her. She was always trying to keep tabs on Bill Clinton.*

ALBERT GORE
* An egotistical ass who was once overheard by his Secret Service detail lecturing his son that he needed to do better in school or he would end up like these guys, pointing to the agents.*

GEORGE W. & LAURA BUSH
*The Secret Service loved him and Laura Bush. He was also the most physically in shape who had a very strict workout regimen. The Bushes made sure their entire administrative and household staff understood that they were to respect and be considerate of the Secret Service.*
*She was one of the nicest First Ladies, if not the nicest. She never had any harsh word to say about anyone.*

*BARACK & MICHELLE OBAMA
*Clinton all over again – hates the military and looks down on the Secret Service. He is egotistical and cunning. He looks you in the eye and appears to agree with you but turns around and does the opposite. He has temper tantrums.*
*She is a complete bitch who basically hates anybody who is not black, hates the military and looks at the Secret Service as servants.