Amy Chozick puts Peter Principle of MSMon full display with 'Chasing Hillary'

Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns, and One Intact Glass Ceiling by Amy Chozick
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This book had hit the one-star level WELL before the finish line, but I slogged through so you don't have to. This is going to be an extended version of what I originally posted on Goodreads.

First, no index? Any nonfiction book, other than something like a self-help manual, without an index, even one written as breezily as this, without an index? Automatic loss of a star. That's in part because I do that in general with no-index books, but here in particular, the lack of an index undercuts the book's claims to seriousness.

Second, that breeziness. (And, that doesn't count the personal bias in political reporting, nor the way that personal bias is waved like a wet dishrag. Nor does it count that [although the title should have given this away, I guess in hindsight] that this is part of the book being about Chozick as much as Clinton.)

Now, let's get to the real mistakes, and the biggies, that torpedoed this baby.

First, her "Berniebros"? I'm not saying Chozick didn't get some of the Tweets she claims. BUT! ... She makes it look like about EVERY Sanders backer was one of these strawman stereotype Berniebros. Beyond that, post-election at least, donut Twitter has enough vileness in it that it probably doesn't have much to learn from the alt right.

All of this, in turn — the reality vs. Chozick's framing — gets back to the bias above.

Second, a clearly proven error. In chastising Robbie Mook for being a tightwad, she claims on page 152 that the Clinton campaign gave some of its leftover money to Jill Stein's recount effort.

This made me say "huh?" in part because I'm a Green voter and had never heard of such a thing.

I checked around with Green friends, and sure enough, untrue. Clinton's campaign had talked about sharing some data/data crunching, but I'm not sure it did that. NEVER gave money.

And, really, couldn't give much anyway.

Federal Elections Commission says that one political campaign CANNOT give another more than $2,000. Amy, took me a 30-second Google to find that.

Third, the Clinton Foundation has had actual ethics problems, and even more than other people at your paper have reported, Amy.

Fourth, yes, incomes for the middle class as well as the upper class did go up under Bill Clinton. But, income inequality still increased. Hell, middle class incomes went up under Shrub, too. And income inequality increased, and more than under the Slickster. This is also easily verifiable, and the way Chozick made her statement came off as PR first, journalism distant second. (At least, real journalism.)

Fifth, Chozick has several cover-ups by omission on foreign policy issues. She has no mention that Bill Clinton broke the promise of Poppy Bush, Helmut Kohl and other NATO members not to expand NATO eastward. She also doesn't mention Clinton's interference in Russian elections. (Sidebar: Perhaps, and far more subtly than with sacks of money, Shrub Bush and Obama did more of the same that we don't know about yet.)

Sixth, nothing but a brief mention of Clinton's emails, and nothing of her private server. Related? Chozick takes her paper's default stance on "Russiagate."

Seventh is the "reveal" by Chozick of how the Times was in the tank for Clinton, despite Bill claiming an anti-Clinton conspiracy by the Times. The "reveal" is keyed by the Times holding a story about the clusterfuck of our intervention in Libya until after the South Carolina primary. (Nothing new there, though; remember, it held a story about Shrub Bush's snooping on Americans until after he was re-elected.)

The reveal itself is nice. There's no real critical take on this bias by Chozick, though. Nor does she critically examine her own bias, starting with fawning over the idea of the "FWP," as she routinely abbreviates First Woman President.

As for her claim to be an agent of Russian intelligence by reporting on hacked emails? First, the first emails were likely stolen by Seth Rich or someone else inside DNC, not hacked by Russians. Second, per a good piece by Jack Shafer, any Russian activity was only background noise. Plus, the NYT reporters who got the Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg weren't agents of North Vietnam or whatever, Shafer notes.

My take on this point? Chozick's trying to extend her Warholian 15 minutes of fame. Of course, that's the big picture point of the whole book, isn't it?

With all of those major, and minor, errors, it was easy to one-star.

That said, she does give us an occasional look at the NYT background, like the snooty arrogance of people at the home office seeming to assume that there's only one time zone in the US.

As for my subhead? Per the likes of Charles Pierce at the Esquire, plenty of real journalists, reporters and editors at newspapers out in the heartland, could do a better job than Chozick, and probably than several others, at the Times. I am personally sure of this.

Anyway, it's clear that that the Beltway/Acela Corridor MSM has problems. This is a good illustration but still the tip of an iceberg.

And, The Slickster and Failed Would-be President (Chozick's FWP) still think the Times hated them? When they had a Hillary-token feminist reporting? (Chozick is smart enough to recognize that Hillary's feminism, like that of most her Hillbot supporters, is selective. She also notes the Slickster deliberately went Sister Souljah on Black Lives Matter. Must give credit for something. She gets half credit for noting sexism and even sexual harassment on the Clinton campaign trail by the "guys" who ran her campaign; misses full credit for not reporting it in live time. Not reporting it because she believed in Hillary as FWP, even while noting Hillary tolerated this, cuts it to one-quarter credit.)

Meanwhile, the Times panders to Clinton supporters, then to counterbalance that, foists the likes of Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss on all of us.


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'A Higher Loyalty' — to his own self-image?

A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership by James Comey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Four stars for the center Clinton-Trump material; loses a star for other items.

A few introductory notes.

First, at the presidential level, I did my "duopoly exit" at the start of this century. Related to that, I dislike a lot of the structure of the national-level American polis, above all, the whole strong-presidential system that is wrapped up with the modern electoral college having pushed America to a two-party system. (The civil liberties of our constitutional amendments are great, except that we need a few more like an explicit right to privacy; the body of the constitution is largely anachronistic dreck.)

Second, re the candidates of said duopoly? Beyond having little regard for their parties, I have even less regard for the Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton that were foist on us. Trump is a boor who has a history of racism that provoked a suit by HUD over racism in housing. He also has a history of mafia ties, which also include the further hypocrisy of him hiring illegal immigrants, as many believe he still does today.. Clinton has a sense of entitlement and a willingness to manipulate Democratic Party leadership and actions to that end. Both have long histories of corruption. Trump in his housing and other properties, his 4x bankruptcy, and his willingness to play footsie with foreign leaders, or yet more shady characters — that link above talks about his connection to Russian as well as American mobsters. Clinton has a history that goes back to her and WJ Clinton's Whitewater; you have to really be a died-in-the-wool "Hillbot" to believe it was just luck that led her to a $100K killing in cattle futures. The pair's corruption has continued through some of the less ethical activities of the Clinton Foundation.

Third, while I do believe in some sort of "deep state," I don't believe it is some sort of massive, unified apparatus out to "get Trump." Even worse are wingnut Members of Congress like Nunes et al playing with this. (And, about as bad are the likes of Ray McGovern, trading on his CIA knowledge to tout Nunes as a truthseeker rather than denounce him as a political hack, even as McGovern plays two-siderism on this issue. Worse yet, McGovern voted for Stein, and knows what two-siderism is.)

Fourth, I do not believe Vladimir Putin caused Trump to win. He may have orchestrated some meddling, but even there, the first round of DNC emails was likely stolen by Seth Rich or somebody else inside the DNC, not hacked. Even if most alleged Russian-related meddling was actually caused by Russia, its effects were minuscule. The Facebook groups' spending was a drop in the bucket. Also related? I highly resent "Hillbot" insinuations that third party candidates were tools of Vladimir Putin. And also related? Whatever meddling Putin did officially or semi-officially do is less than the US did in two 1990s elections in Russia, let alone elsewhere in the world.

I felt all of this introduction was necessary to background my review of what is certainly a contentious book. I see a lot of "two-siderism" in a lot of reviews, and I'm telling you there's more than two sides in American politics and thus in reaction to the book.

OK, the book!

First, James Comey himself. He comes off as a generally straight shooter. But not always and not totally; more on that below. Sometimes, it seems like the letter of honesty but not the spirit. However, he also comes off as sometimes sanctimonious, perhaps strongly so at times. I think this backfired on him after AG Loretta Lynch met Bill Clinton on the Phoenix tarmac. The title of this book attests to that. More on that below. Another s-word, besides sanctimonious, also comes to mind. Comey can be smarmy at times. And, often, these two s-words intersect with a "by the books" version of honesty and nobody is served well.

I think this is a largely accurate view of what happened in the 2016 election vis-a-vis James Comey's part in it, from the Clinton emails and server issues, through post-election Trump trying to get mafioso-type loyalty from Comey. (See what I said above about Trump's long history of mob ties, some of which Comey surely knows about, beyond Comey's own investigation of non-Trump mob cases.) George Will, recalling a sick suck-up event last June, supports this. I think Comey's personal assessment, and his assessment of DOJ assessment, of just how penalizable Clinton was, is also correct. That said, I do agree with Comey, despite the fact that the FBI can nail anybody for lying to it, that Petraeus should have been specifically charged with this, and should have done jail time.

At the same time, Comey is not totally write about Trump's personality. Per Quora, I am reminded that, if the roasting Obama gave Trump at the 2011 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner pissed Trump off, he still laughed about it in public. More here.

Comey is right that Hillary Clinton's issues were largely her fault. As for the "Colin Powell used private email," Comey responds — maybe the first time I've directly read this – that Powell and others who did this never sent classified material over a personal email account, but Hillary Clinton did. And, that's not to mention the private server, which Hillbots generally avoid like the plague.

I think the investigation was generally decently handled, per two paragraphs above, until the Phoenix tarmac. Lynch had already started showing her cards before that with the insistence on the word "matter." Comey did the best he could with that — or at least presents himself that way, but he should have kept that in mind post-Phoenix and acted differently. If he felt this was like Lynch dumping something in his lap, he should have told her so, and then asked that she have Deputy AG Sally Yates take over as the DOJ public face. He should then have talked to Yates directly. Or he should have asked for a special prosecutor. He should NOT have assumed this was "his baby." That's the sanctimoniousness. If the apparent lack of communication between Lynch and Yates became bigger, that too should have been kept as purely their baby, not his.

Yates, not him, then would have (presumably) spoken to Congress. Ditto on Yates deciding what public communication was needed when new Clinton e-mails popped up in the Weiner-Humedin chain.

If Yates refuses? And Lynch won't "person up"? You either resign on principle or leak about this on principle right then.

Trump probably still would have fired Comey soon enough. But, Comey's hands would have been even cleaner than they actually are.

Speaking of things Trump, the New York Times gets Bureau and DOJ staff on background saying Comey mishandled the early Russia and Trump campaign ties investigation that started in 2016. They say he should have used different agents from the Clinton investigation, and shouldn't have consolidated them in general and let alone at headquarters. What led to that?

And, was Comey's refusal to announce the investigation a form of bet-hedging? What would have happened had he not announced the late re-opening of the Clinton investigation? Even more, what if he had, as noted above, punted back to Lynch in summer 2016?

Comey also carefully phrased that what he did that he details in the book after the firing wasn't a leak. More recent discussion, and not just by Trump Trainers, says maybe so, maybe not. The fact that Comey insists on this comes off as sanctimonious, doubly so since he claims his memoranda about each Trump meeting is personal, not government, property, but doesn't include them in the book. Some other of his Trump-scenes paintings look smarmy.

Other matters? Comey is too nice to Lynch on the Phoenix tarmac issue. She should have known the optics were horrible, especially when the meeting stretched to 30 minutes. So, too, should have the Slickster. Did Lynch have an ulterior motive? Who knows. Bill surely did, even if it was not the one of creating a conflict of interest; it may have been one of strong hubby Bill fighting to protect Hillary.

In any case, Comey drops a smug, smarmy hint that Lynch might have problems in general on the investigatin, then says, "It's classified," on his source for that.

The book, outside of Trump-Clinton, is weak in other ways. In talking about a new post-Ferguson wave of minority distrust of cops, and the FBI's difficulty in recruiting minorities, Comey never mentioned COINTELPRO. Nor did he mention that FBI several arrests of alleged terrorists, in the minds of many, were entrapments. Nor – beyond the fact that many people will pay for it — does he make any real effort to understand the side of Apple et al on smartphone encryption strength. No discussion of the possible wrongs of the Patriot Act and related law.

The sanctimoniousness on the leak-or-not is more than just that, though, and ties with this. It's a bit of "the ends justify the means" stance. Comey makes that clear with phone encryption; on the things not mentioned, he probably believes alleged terrorists were never "really" entrapped; the FBI just did what it needed to. Ditto on COINTELPRO.

Above all, so is Comey's Al Haig-like "I'm in charge now" on the last months of the Clinton investigation. How much of that was in Comey's older cultural DNA and how much is him as FBI director, I am not sure.

Update, June 8: Related to all of this, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz has reportedly found that Comey disobeyed lines of authority at times; the word "insubordinate" is allegedly used in a draft report. Horowitz's report also allegedly rebukes Lynch.

And, the story of White Boy Rick points out the real FBI, not Comey's PR bullshit.

June 14: More information and details from the Horowitz report.

First, rank elitism, not Deep State conspiracy theory blather, is a good explainer about many FBI agents, if Peter Strzok is representative of others in saying Bernie Sanders "is an idiot like Trump." (Related: As that link reminds us, per the FBI that Comey wants to turd-polish, Strzok and Lisa Page were having an extramarital affair. That's not only unethical, but in any investigative agency, leaves one open to blackmail.

The report also reveals that Comey made his public announcement about the October re-opening of the Clinton case not out of selflessness, but out of job security CYA, per Atlantic. And, per my SOP comments above about talking to Yates, apparently he, or someone in his circles, DID tell Yates this. And, the NYT also jumps on his smugness.

And Comey himself still doesn't get it, or doesn't want to, as far as Horowitz's calling him insubordinate, as his June 14 NYT column indicates.

That said, for both the Trumpers and Clintonistas who have worshiped the ground he has walked on at various times, the idea that he's ultimately a typical FBI director never comes to mind, apparently. That said, now that Trump is proving to be more a warmonger than in the election, and Clinton was always that way, and both have sometimes more similar than dissimilar stances on parts of their domestic background that is related (the Patriot Act came from materials already under discussion in Bill's presidency), this is probably something that both say is a credit rather than a demerit. But, that's yet another reason I did my "duopoly exit."

Peter Van Buren adds that it would have been nice to hear more about the Bush-Ashcroft-Gonzales-Addington stuff. I agree; other earlier stuff might also have been nice, including more on Giuliani.

Even more than that, without him claiming "it's classified," beyond the bare bones of the Steele dossier, I would have liked to hear more of Comey's take on "Putin did it." To the degree that Vladimir Putin actually did interfere with the 2016 presidential elections, it was surely less than we interfered with 1990s elections in Russia. However, neither Hillbots nor MAGA-heads want an honest discussion of this issue, and I suspect that establishmentarian Comey wouldn't give us much of one.

As for the personal anecdotes about Trump's perma-tan, and not having THAT small of hands? Maybe Comey was trying to personalize the meeting. Maybe he was trying to look neutral by the variety of descriptors. To me, it wasn't a big deal, unlike some reviewers. I did find it mildly interesting, no more.

In any case, because the book gives us, unintentionally, a decent look at Comey the man as well as the Trump and Clinton incidents, it's still worth a solid three stars. Comey the person, at least on the issues in this book, may only be worth two, though.

Many of the reviews on Goodreads and Amazon give good examples of the two-siderism that has been the bane of America for two full years.

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Update, May 14: Former Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein has turned both barrels on Comey, calling him a "partisan pundit" who trampled "bright lines that should never be crossed."

The specific target of his ire is how Comey handled reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails adn server after then-AG Loretta Lynch had had her conflict-of-interest inducing meeting with Bill Clinton on the Phoenix tarmac.

Rosenstein is totally right. It was grandstanding, as I said at the time, and not SOP, either. Then-Assistant AG Sally Yates should have been contacted by Comey and she should have been asked to get Lynch to officially recuse herself, then take over.

Rosenstein said he would have handled Comey's firing differently had it been just him, not Trump, but that Comey deserved to be fired.

He did.

Period and end of story, Donut Twitter and Resistance.

Rabid #Hillbots and the name #JillStein

Jill Stein wasn't the best Green Party presidential candidate in 2016. I've said that many a time.

I've also repeatedly said the GP isn't as good of a third party of the left vehicle as it could be by any means

But, both are what they are, and Jill Stein was better than Hillary Clinton and the Green Party is better than the Democratic Party where available.

That's why it's fun to watch rabid Hillbots / Clintonistas go even more rabid whenever Jill Stein's name is mentioned. The Mueller indictments last Friday (my take here) plus Twitter's feed on Sunday, are the latest proof.

That's why it's more fun yet to troll the #ImWithHer / #StillWithHer folks to point out Cynthia McKinney 2008, Stein 2012, Stein 2016.

The Hillbots, as this shows, practice a certain tribalist version of feminism and the leader of the tribe is Hillary Rodham Clinton. Elizabeth Warren could have been seeking the Dem nomination instead of Hillary Clinton and her Dem primary backers would have been attacked just as much as Berniecrats.

Suck on it, Hillbots. You know it's true.

Besides, with all the paid trolls of David Brock, you're in no position to complain.

Internet Research Agency, butt-hurt #Hillbots the #FirstAmendment and Russophobia

Update, June 9, 2019: Refuting both Trump Train smokescreen spreaders AND certain strains of left-liberals and leftists, with different types of "whataboutism" from both, Symanetc reports that the Internet Research Agency's work was more painstaking and more hands-on (in terms of human intervention on many social media accounts that weren't totally "bots") than previously believed.

A few thoughts, based on the federal indictment (also here) and expanded from Twitter, even as places like the Bezos Post glad-hand special counsel Robert Mueller. (For thumbnails on the 13 indictees, go here.)

I waited until today to blog, because I wanted to see how many MSMers, and Hillbots on Twitter, etc., claimed this meant there was a "there" there not only on Putin Did It but Putin-Trump collusion.

And Tweeterers? Never assume that just because someone disagrees with you, he/she/it/they are on the "other side." Once again, Idries Shah:

“To 'see both sides' of a problem is the surest way to prevent its complete solution. Because there are always more than two sides.” 

Also, never assume, let alone be presumptuous enough to assume, that just because a person is on a third or fourth side of an issue that they don't understand the issue.

First, Internet Research Agency allegedly started work "in or around 2014" or "beginning as early as 2014." That's before Trump announced his candidacy. That right there undercuts the collusion angle, which Mueller's indictment never hints at anyway. Sorry, Hillbots. Ron Chusid at Liberal Values Blog largely agrees.

Second, §4-6 of "Introduction" focus on social media hucksterism discussed elsewhere. Nothing illegal about this that I know of unless Mueller has unplayed cards, or unless he's throwing a broad dragnet on what counts as a campaign endorsement ad. I think he is, and that's where my First Amendment concerns start. I'm sure I'm in a minority of Americans there.

Third, §7 of "Introduction" appears to claim illegal campaign contributions by foreign nationals. None of the spoof FB groups donated money OR "a thing of value" to Trump campaign, AFAIK. Telling people there's a pro-Trump group holding a rally, and buying an ad to tell them that? NOT a political endorsement ad in my book. More 1A concerns; more of me being in a minority.

Fourth, §12b of "Defendants" claims one used "false pretenses" to stand in front of the White House with a sign. WHAT? Is there a Federal Department of White House Standing In Front Of that one must register with, a la Monty Python?

Fifth, per the "Federal Regulatory Agencies" section and my points 2-3, we're coming close to criminalizing everyday lying when it's connected to politics. The FEC may adopt new standards for online political ad identification, but it hasn't yet, other than requiring explicit identifications on Facebook political ads, and besides, we don't have ex post facto laws. If, per §48 of "defendants," what expressly counts as advertising for the election of a candidate today is involved, that's one thing. But, this was posted way below the talk about fake social media groups.

Usually, on an indictment, you lead with your best punch. That makes this look weak for that reason, too.

Also, can advocating AGAINST a candidate be construed as a call to vote FOR another? I did my #DuopolyExit long ago, and would have voted for Jill Stein no matter what. This charge seems weak on those grounds as well.

Sixth, if there was actual identity theft? Stuff like fake driver's licenses is state-level crime. Were it not for points 1-5 above, it would not be Eff Bee Eye purview. (Wiki explains what types of identity theft in the US is considered federal; fake DLs count as federal if used to commit another crime. That then said, most of what I've noted above, and do more below, is not IMO a crime.)

And, that all said, the ID thefts, if real, were certainly stupid. And illegal at some level of government, of course.

As for Richard Pinedo? Likely nothing more than the bagman/middleman/cut-out for purchasing false IDs. Likely NOT a separate activity, as, from what I see here, he'd done similar work, shady if not illegal, but at least some of it illegal, for other folks going back to 2012.

Seventh, §43 of "Defendants" claims that they "engaged in operations to ... support Bernie Sanders" as well as Trump. And even Jill Stein! So, we got butt-hurt #Hillbots inside #MuellerTime? (The indictment doesn't say what "support" involves.

Related to this is bad optics. Mueller's already had to remove people from his team for this. I'm talking Peter Strzok, of course.

Whoever on Mueller's team, if not the man himself editing if not writing, presented this indictment to the grand jury for approval should be taken out and flogged.

Eighth, from what I see above, civil liberties orgs like the ACLU and CCR should be squawking loudly. This all comes off as #FirstAmendment-chilling. And foreign nationals are entitled to most constitutional protections not restricted to citizens.

==

Updates beyond original Twitter thread.

The "Destruction of Evidence" on §58 ff is also thin soup. Deleting an email account because of a media story long before any criminal probe started is destruction of evidence?

Buying ads for promoting a pro-Trump rally is certainly not direct endorsement of a candidate in my book. It's also getting close to violating the spirit of the freedom of assembly clause of the First Amendment.

The section seven of my comments? If we extend that, then theoretically no foreign national could ever buy a Facebook (or newspaper) ad that says: "I like President Trump." Or anything like that.

Surely somebody besides me is seeing First Amendment concerns?

The Russkies should have gotten 10 real American friends of Pinedo and given them earnest money to open bank accounts with threats of omerta action if they asked questions, rather than going down the road of ID fraud.

That said, if the Concord groups actually purchased the ads, and they're American citizens, even if cutouts, there again, Mueller's dragnet may be too wide. The indictment says "defendants and their co-conspirators."

A New York Times guest columnist goes so far as to speculate the Russians WANTED to get caught as part of sowing problems. I think that's a step too far, but the fact that somebody thinks that proves that they are still sowing problems. Or that many Americans are self-sowing.

Shattered: Inside baseball book strikes out in first at bat

Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign by Jonathan   Allen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

That strikeout occurs at the end of the introduction

The authors talk about a "Kremlin-based campaign" against her and the failure of the media to get Trump's tax return while it "scrutinized her every move."

The first is factually incorrect. The second is narratively incorrect.

The most we know the Kremlin did right now was to try to hack into Iowa and Arizona state voting offices. Other activities believed to have been done by Russian individuals have not been tied to the Kremlin. As in, could be individual hackers, etc. More important, yet, the best intelligence indicated the DNC email leaks given to Wikileaks had their physical transmission done in the US and not over the Internet. More than that we can't say for certain, but it seems pretty clear no Russkies were involved.

The media? Wrote plenty of stories about Trump's taxes. Remember David Cay Johnston? I do. Wrote plenty of other stories about him. That said, it's not a CRIME for a presidential candidate to hold tax returns and, if it were, the media is not a grand jury or a district attorney.

The rest of the book generally slouches toward Gomorrah from there. The first time Bernie's "white liberal" backers is used of him, it's semi-sneering. The book doesn't cover either Clinton's OR Sanders' failures in foreign policy issues. The problematic nature of the Clinton Foundation, and Hillary Clinton's lies about donors to it — including lies to President Obama — get unmentioned.

And, even the inside baseball doesn't have that much new stuff for regular campaign watchers, especially those who saw a moderate variant of 2008 repeating itself.

The book in general reads as clearly coming from an inside-the-Beltway pundit duo.

I read through to the end to make sure I wasn't missing anything. Nothing important new. Just nuances of Team Clinton fighting over the whole schmeer.

And, the book ignores the lawsuit filed against the DNC, the basics of which were surely available before it went to press.

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Hillary Speaks! #Hillbots swoon! I throw up in their mouths

Yes, Hillary spoke.

And told us more bullshit than in the previous nine months.

First, the idea that because of her sex, she couldn't get mad over the election results is rank sexism. It is, you tribalist #ImWithHer (and ignoring Cynthia McKinney 2008, Jill Stein 2012, Jill Stein 2016) #Hillbots.

It's sexist because it perpetuates a myth that women are somehow unable to get angry. Constitutionally, of course they are. (By that, I mean emotional constitutions, not the toilet paper of Philly 1787.)

It's sexist because it inflates claims about the so-called patriarchy, if that's what she's getting at. Nobody is repressing her right to get angry.

It's also classist, because it ignores that many workaday world women, and men, can't get angry on the job or they'll be fired.

And, it's a lie.

Anybody who believes Hillary's claim she couldn't be angry because she's a woman ignores the lampshade she reportedly threw at Bill in the White House. It ignores the many other reported instances of anger when she was First Lady. it ignores the anger that’s noted in the new book, “Shattered.”

What was it Billy Martin said about Reggie Jackson and George Steinbrenner? 

Oh, yes.

"One's a born liar, the other's convicted."

Just plug in Hillary Clinton first, and Bill Clinton halfway (on "is," and loss of law license, etc.) second.

Of course, this all goes to show that, despite their rejoinder to Karl Rove a decade-plus ago, most tribalist Democrats aren’t really part of the reality-based community either.

OK, besides that like, and Hillbots and Clintonistas being ready to believe it, let's unpack this more.

There's the language of victimhood:

“I was the victim of a very broad assumption that I was going to win.”

Well, that Jehovah's Witness type back of hand to forehead will probably click a box with a few, but it's also not credible.

"Shattered" indicates that, at least after overrated ex-FBI Director James Comey spoke about Anthony's Weiner having probed its way into your emails, you were worried. And, Five Thirty Eight and other polls noted at that time that you didn't have a lot of room for error. Maybe your own attempts at head-faking, as Robby Mook and others call it, over not going to Iowa contributed to that, and you hoist yourself by your own petard.

I mean, you're the person who still claims you somehow got "lucky" enough to make a $100,000 killing on cattle futures. Don't forget, that happened at the same time as the constellation of events eventually lumped together as "Whitewater." While Jeff Gerth et al may have gotten much wrong, where there's enough smoke, there's surely a low-grade ground fire.

As for blaming the DNC for not enough data?

Doesn't this really indict your own campaign, since Dear Leader in 2008, and 2012, ran his own data-mining and targeting operation separate from the DNC? And, isn't this the DNC that's being sued right now for allegedly rigging the primary campaign in your favor? Isn't this the DNC run by your best bud Donna Brazile after you nudged aside Debbie Wassermann Schultz?

And, in his own piece, Brains reminds of her joint fundraising with the DNC. Riffing on Brains, let's also remember that she was partaking of the DNC's data operations. You know, the ones with the security-glitchy servers run by NGP VAN, the one that the Sanders staffer got into and then Debbie Wasserman Schultz temporary cut the Sanders campaign off before the threat of a lawsuit.

Her joke about "covfefe" fell as flat as the rest of the left hand of the duopoly's jokes about it, or as flat as the rest of her campaign.

Actually, it IS about the Russians. It's Trump's code that "Bill is sleeping with a Russian bimbo, courtesy Frank Giustra."

People talk about how she's a different person once the political "wraps" are off. Well, if she really has run her final campaign, the wraps are off. And she didn't she much in the way of human warmth. Instead, this looked like a calculated press op to butter the public up for her book, which will probably sink like a lead-petrified turd.

And, is there anything much more tiresome than an earnest liar?

And, yes, despite Bill seemingly being the smooth, suave liar, I think that proves that he's less the born one than she is in some ways.

The Slickster no more believed his own lies than he did in the man in the moon. Whereas she seems to believe hers. But, she's got that junior high school earnestness that makes the self-believed lying still not work, but in a different way from Bill.

#Hillbots are still "Shattered" about James Comey

BREAKING (May 9): Comey has just been fired by President Trump. And no, I do not think there's a Nixonian-type conspiracy behind this, conjoined with other Trump firings.

That said, why?

Here's my theory.

Trump knew that Comey was actually an agent of Vladimir Putin. And, he knew that Rachel Maddow was about to find out. Voila! No choice but to fire him.

More seriously, the firing has a mix of schadenfreude and MAGA-grade bullshit. The two combine, as shown in the firing letter by Trump based on the firing recommendation letters of AG Jeff Sessions and Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein. They claim, Rosenstein especially, that he's being fired because he mishandled Hillary's emails, notably overriding AG Loretta Lynch, and that they thus have no confidence in him.

There IS a grain of truth there. They're afraid he'll do the same to Sessions. (That said, remember when Democrats like Chuck Schumer had no confidence in Comey? Schadenfreude!)

And, it appears they shut the barn door after the horses were out. CNN reports that federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia, have issued grand jury subpoenas to associates of Michael Flynn.

Yes, it is Watergate-like, in a small degree. Whether it's like Watergate in a big degree or not depends on whether or not Sessions, through Rosenstein, try to retroactively annul or quash those subpoenas.

And, the newest revelation is that Trump wanted Comey to be his consigliere, and put on the ask just a week after inauguration. Read here.

That said, for the Hillbots? Guess what — more birds come home more tightly to roost.

Finally, don't forget my snark of last week about Comey's secret revelations to the Senate. If there's one thing I love as much as the smell of schadenfreude in the morning, it's the sound of petards hoisting.

Sidebar: I don't care how long he's been in DOJ under how many bipartisan administrations, Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein does have a credibility crisis. No, per Watergate, he has a credibility gap — one of his own making, by authoring the "here's your reasons, Mr. President" letter.

Unless he immediately states that the president kept him in the dark on some issues, the idea that the NYT editorial board can appeal to alleged past credibility is a laugher. If he really were going to be an Elliot Richardson or William Ruckelshaus, he never would have written that letter in the first place.

==

It's been revealed (by who? some leaker inside the FBI? a minority-side Senate staffer? per Pro Publica, one leaker of two appears to be FBI  scratch that, could be Rod Roseinstein! AG's office is law enforcement) that James Comey overstated to the Senate how many emails of Huma Abedin's wound up on husband Anthony Weiner's magic uncircumcised 7-inch smartphone.

And, as a result, Hillbots like American Prospector Paul Waldman or general inside-the-Beltway hack Chris Cillizza are getting out the long knives to shiv Comey as much as they can. And they're dishing hard.

Of course, none of them yet wants to talk about Hillary Clinton's private email server. Or her generally inept, as well as overly buttoned-down, campaign. (Just like in 2008.)

Per that Pro Publica link, I would like to know more about why Comey said "hundreds" or "thousands" of emails, of course. But, so far at least, PP's story didn't have the leg length of the leakers telling us about any "why," or if this got any pushback within the Bureau — whether in advance, if anybody knew in advance that Comey would mention numbers, or afterward if not, or other things.

That said, PP's story is a story. It's not a column, which Waldman's straightforwardly is, or a column masquerading as a story, which Cillizza's is.

Let’s dig deeper. First, Waldman:

Every time he’s forced to answer questions about his extraordinary decision to inject himself into the 2016 presidential campaign a mere 11 days before the election ...

No mention of Loretta Lynch meeting the Slickster on the Phoenix tarmac. No mention, per the likes of Ted Rall, about Obama himself upset at being blind-sided over Clinton’s private email server.

And Cillizza:

For Clinton and her allies, Comey's mistake is further evidence of his botched handling of the investigation into her private email server and the role he played — wittingly or unwittingly — in shaping the 2016 election. 

Clinton, in a conversation with CNN's Christiane Amanpour last week, blamed Comey's letter to members of Congress on October 28 — informing them that the Weiner-Abedin computer had been found and the investigation re-opened — for her loss at the hands of Donald Trump. 

"I was on the way to winning until the combination of Jim Comey's letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off," Clinton said. "And the evidence for that intervening event is compelling, persuasive."

Again, no mention of the background. But Cillizza DID include this:

But he went ahead with it anyway. 

And concluded with this (emphasis mine):

This misstatement by Comey further muddies the conversation about what exact role he played in the 2016 election and what role he wanted to play.

OK there.

I'm no apologist for Comey. I know he's a bureaucrat par excellence who has polished his own apple pretty well ever since the John Ashcroft bedside scene nearly 15 years ago.

But the reality is? At this point, Comey could emit an Al Gore-style sigh and get jumped on by some people.

In short, they're "shattered" about Comey but not at all about the "Shattered" revelations in detail about all of the above. (And more. From stuff I've read, Clinton may even have thrown Abedin herself under the bus.)

That said, to go beyond the eight facts the Federalist points to from the book, is a fact nine.

Whether it's blaming Comey, or blaming Vlad the Impaler Putin, the blame game continues to come from the Democratic para-Party think tank apparatus.

This, as much as apparatchik retread in Tom Perez as DNC chairman, is half the problem. As long as they focus on the alleged "who kneecapped Hillary" rather than "we helped Hillary kneecap" herself, the think-tank Waldmans and the pundit Cillizzas will help the DNC perpetuate neoliberal dreck as party ideas as well as party leadership. But, when "exposure" actually is good coin of the realm, such stances aren't likely to change.

At the same time, the answer of many Berniecrats is no answer either. Starting a third party when the Green Party already exists? I mean, Rocky Anderson's Justice Party is already one new third party of the left too many, and I still suspect Naderite hands behind its founding.

That said, a TV series based on the book? Kind of laughable to me. If it happened, who plays Hillary. Not Kate McKinnon from SNL, I don't think. Age-appropriate? The Greek goddess, Arianna Huffington.

In any case, per Ted Rall's latest, the blame game and the shivs won't change reality.

At the same time, as Jeff St. Clair notes, James Comey is ultimately a figure deserving of little sympathy.

Yes, we're learning more about how many previously undisclosed contacts Flynn, or other Trump surrogates, had with Kislyak or other Russians. Again, though, none of them illegal. And, really, other than the non-disclosure, none unethical. And, Counterpunch is probably right in that the national security establishment is working hand-in-hand with the mainstream media (whose leakers about Trump's Israeli intell leaking may be worse than Trump's original leaking) to make this nothingburger into a Big Mac.

Update, May 14, 2019: Former Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein has turned both barrels on former FBI Director James Comey, calling him a "partisan pundit" who trampled "bright lines that should never be crossed."

The specific target of his ire is how Comey handled reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails adn server after then-AG Loretta Lynch had had her conflict-of-interest inducing meeting with Bill Clinton on the Phoenix tarmac.

Rosenstein is totally right. It was grandstanding, as I said at the time, and not SOP, either. Then-Deputy AG Sally Yates, Rosenstein's predecessor should have been contacted by Comey and she should have been asked to get Lynch to officially recuse herself, then take over. If Yates refused to act, then it's out of Comey's hands (other than leaking to the press).

A heartland left-liberal vs Clintonista elites

There are six women in my office, here in red state heartlands.

Not one mentioned it when Trump's "pussy grab" comments came up. And I'm quite sure all of them, if they voted in the presidential election, voted Trump.

I should have pondered that more at the time. I wouldn't have needed to later postulate a reverse Bradley effect for Trump winning, and I would have recognized at the time that he had a better chance than thought, per the L.A. Times poll that said so regularly.

As for other issues?

Is Trump some sort of racist? I think so. The decades-old suit for redlining blacks in rentals is good proof. And, don't claim that an out-of-court settlement with no admission of guilt is a point in his favor; that's the way the feds roll in general against rich defendants. Proof in his favor would have been Trump fighting the suit and winning. Don't claim a Jewish son-in-law is proof in his favor, either. A person can be racist toward one group and not toward another.

Back to the heartland. If not racist, there's still plenty of Project Implicit type unconscious bias running around the heartland. Or, there's the old "I have black friends," or "I have black friends and even they say...." This doesn't mean that every Trump voter is racist, or even if so, that that was a major voting factor.

Fact is, we don't know how many pro-Trump alt-right types even showed up to vote, and how many just turned out to protest.

Trump's victory was kind of complicated. Clinton's loss probably less so. Lower turnout, lower percentage of minority votes, bad strategic decisions made worse by running them all through a computer algorithm? That's obvious. I'm not a Millennial, but, I am a left-liberal, not a liberal, and her campaign simply had no appeal.

Paul Krugman: Your Jackass O'Day with Hillary Clinton Gets Gored (updated)

Stealing a recent blogging theme from friend Brains (who should start using blog tags so we can track this idea) I am doing my own first Jackass O'Day piece.

It's on Paul Krugman. For this, which I on Twitter called his Worst.Column.Ever. Because it is.

Let's look back at 2000's election, since he does.

Certain chunks of the media may have said they would prefer to have a beer with Bush rather than Gore. Of course, one of those offices with Krugman. (See Dowd, Maureen.)

That said, Krugman first ignores that Gore had real baggage. I'm not just talking about how to use, or not use, the Big Dog aka the Slickster, on the campaign trail.

He WAS, when not as wooden as an old hickory tree, a personality who often came off as lecturing, occasionally even supercilious.

But he had bigger baggage yet. Like illegal fundraising.

Besides Wikipedia having an entry called "1996 United States campaign finance controversy," in June 2000, Salon ran what it called "A Gore scandal guide for dummies."

His real problem here is that he wasn't as slick as The Slickster (or Madame Slickster) so this all stuck to him more. And, it began looking more and more like a coverup. Plus, the allegedly cleaner than a hounds-tooth AG Janet Reno refused to appoint an independent prosecutor. So, despite him not wanting to be too close to the Slickster on the 2000 campaign trail, because of his attempt to stifle the campaign finance investigation, and what must be called Reno's attempt to do the same, the Clinton-Gore Administration left plenty of mud on Al Gore.

As for the 2000 press's coverage of Bush, it may have been somewhat too friendly, but was it totally fawning? No. And while Shrub had inherited daddy's malaprops, he had by and large avoided huge stumbles on the trail or during his Texas governorship, until that old DWI popped up.

That, in turn, even if Gore had nothing to do with it, looked like something Gore would have done. And, Gore's oppo research DID bring up Ralph Nader's holding oil stocks.

That's a whole nother story, and why I eventually didn't vote for Prez in 2000. I thought Nader was more egotistical than either Gore or Bush. And, I thought that him holding Big Oil stocks made him unfit to carry the Green standard.

Anyway, Krugman goes on to fellate the Clinton Foundation. In doing so, he whitewashes the reality of the case of Muhammad Yunus and more.

The more includes ignoring a story his own paper did just last year, about the Clinton Foundation getting a big Russian money windfall after the Hillary Clinton-led State Department signed off on Russia obtaining a share of U.S. uranium production.

Here's the dirty details:

At the heart of the tale are several men, leaders of the Canadian mining industry, who have been major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family. Members of that group built, financed and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium One. …

As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.

And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.

Now, Clintonista flacks have been spinning hard ever since this story was written. But they can't make it go away.  Just Google "Frank Giustra" and you'll learn a lot, lot more.

And we haven't even talked about her vote for the Iraq War, her sponsorship of the coup in Honduras, and other foreign policy fiascos.

Or the Slickster getting $18M as "honorary chancellor" of a for-profit college.

As for Krugman himself? Per Wiki, he worked in the Reagan White House Council of Economic Advisers, though he has attempted to softpedal that — even though he started more than 18 months after Reagan's inauguration. And, he's long been an ardent free-trader, though he now claims new free trade pacts have diminishing returns.

#Clintonistas, Democrats in general, and downballot voting

One of the favorite tropes of the Hillbot crowd is to say the Green Party does nothing but trot out a presidential candidate every four years.

Having voted for Green Party state-level candidates for years, I know that's untrue. Greens even ran a Congressional candidate in West Texas several years ago.

Next, the Clintonistas will shift to how unsuccessful those state and local candidates are.

Well, first of all, you Dems, along with Repugs, have eliminated fusion candidates from more and more states. You've made it deliberately harder for third parties to get state-level ballot access. You've otherwise worked to protect unlevel playing fields and even make them more unlevel.

And that's the polite answer.

The in-your-face answer is tha Dems in Texas have little room to be critical of anybody on downballot races. The GOP has an approximately 2-1 edges in both houses oh the Texas Lege, It has owned all statewide offices for nearly 20 years.

And a fair part of why is that Texas Dems suck at midterm election turnout and Hispanics doubly suck, and no, Battleground Texas won't change this anytime soon. Plus, Dems, a the party of activist federal government, are likely to pay less attention to state-level races than are Republicans.

Beyond that, I've tackled the issue of Hispanic voting in general and in Texas in particular more than once. Their current profiles, especially religious, don't guarantee monolithic or even near-monolithic Democratic loyalty; ditto on the relative importance or not of two hot-button social issues. Meanwhile, BGTX, despite some early boasting, hasn't yet shown real results.

Jill Stein straight answers #Hillbot AND realist attacks on vaccines

First, let's get a rhetorical question up front.

Some of Dr. Jill Stein's latest critics on health issues are trying to score partisan political pro-Clinton points first, pro-science points second. Does that describe you? Be honest, whether the "you" is the punditicracy class or John/Jane Doe.

So, to the likes of David Badash, how much are you driven by pro-science concerns in attacks on Stein & how much by fears of Hillary losing? (Jordan Wasserman is a clear Hillbot, so I'm not rhethorically expecting honest from him.)

First, the Green Party, in this year's platform, has moved more mainstream in its stance on "woo"/alt-med issues.

This:

The Green Party supports a wide range of health care services, including conventional medicine, as well as the teaching, funding and practice of complementary, integrative and licensed alternative health care approaches.

Is something that most Dems would wholeheartedly support.

And another blogger notes she opposes homeopathy, and got platform changes there back in 2012. To me, the changes she got the party to make look as much or more like PR than opposition. But, she did something.

BUT now, perhaps a bit late, she's given a bottom-line answer:

I'm not aware of evidence linking autism with vaccines. Let's do more to support autistic people & their families. https://t.co/eISgfxQ5vm

— Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) July 31, 201

Again, it would have been better earlier, but there it is.

For people who will try to nitpick about it being stated in the form of a negative, I A. Consider it stated well enough and B. Will consider further statements against this to be in part, at least, politically driven.

That includes, even, any amateur or professional movement skeptics, like Galen Broaddus, already blocked on Facebook. 

That said, setting aside the label of "antivaxxer," Stein at first again refused to give a simple yes/no answer on the issue of whether or not vaccines cause autism.

As a result, Dan Ariel, the blogger who defended her on homeopathy at the link above, is now, "furious," mad enough to be close to jumping ship. And I'm getting there myself.

The flip side of calling her a panderer is to state that, while she is straddling two horses, she is pulling them closer. 

Let's also note, California's Democratic Party (shock) also supports pseudomedicine:

California Democrats will…support generally accepted holistic healing practices and alternative medicine, particularly those areas licensed by the state such as acupuncture and medical cannabis and utilized to relieve intractable pain without the side effects of conventional controlled drugs.

Acupuncture has no scientific support. 

And Hillary's own medical guru is a celeb doctor who flirts with quack ideas and has also worked with Rick Warren.

And both Clinton and Obama have their own checkered pasts on the vaccines-autism issue.

Is the Green Party anywhere near perfect? No.

I blogged about my reservations about the Green Party's platform in some depth in 2008, and shorter in 2012. I called for a Science and Reason Party a full decade ago.

I've cut it more slack, as a third party in a duopoly-driven system and because no Socialist party has ballot access in Texas.

Otherwise, outside the actual medical issues, the mix of pablum and pandering in Stein's AMA Reddit statement is something I expect from Democrats and Republicans, but definitely don't want in third-party candidates. And some follow-ups have not been  perfect, namely, her lumping of the FDA and CDC.

That said, for any antivaxxers in the Green Party, let us note the recommended US vaccination schedule is not materially different from elsewhere in the developed world.

==

Update: On the third hand, she believes some sort of woo about wi-fi and health.

Finally, the damn Democratic thing's over

First, Sandernistas, it IS over. And, no excuses. Outside the South, Bernie lost three open or semi-open primaries in the last three days.

Puerto Rico doesn't count in the general, but California's very Democratic and New Jersey leans that way. The "he's more electable" claim took a Battleship-sized hit last night, especially with the margin of loss in California. But, take some solace.

He didn't do too badly, especially given self-imposed gags on Clinton's email problems, self-imposed gags on much of Clinton's foreign policy, and possibly shooting himself in the foot by making himself sound more like a socialist than he actually is. (More on this below.)

Second, Clintonistas, put a sock in your smugness.

Beyond Jill Stein and before her, Cynthia McKinney, being women to get presidential nominations, Victoria Woodhull did back in 1872. If you don't know the name, your tribalism is shallow indeed. If you say "major party," then isn't that a reflection on gender problems in the Democratic Party?

Put a sock in it for another reason.

Sanders was nowhere near the opponent Obama was in 2008, and got a later start than Dear Leader did, too. And you still almost couldn't beat him.

Third, whether you choose to put a sock in it or not, I'll be posting "a sock" .... or two or three ... on Twitter regularly until Nov. 4.

Fourth, per part of the above, really, it's a sad state of affairs that a lifelong grifter with oodles of cash and connections struggled to put away a not-socialist who handicapped his own campaign and may, in his mid-70s, have faced health problems down the road that we now won't know for sure.

We do know that this says a lot about how weak the modern national-level Democratic Party is. I've been saying that for some time.

For Democrats pointing at the weakness of the GOP to nominate Trump, you've got three fingers pointing back at yourself.

Fifth, unfortunately, in some ways, the damn thing probably isn't over, and we're in for more weeks of Sandernista excuse-making and Clintonista smugness. (And, if Sanders does anything more than a pro forma fight for the handful of delegates DC elects next week, more acrimony, too, past what should have been the last battlefield outside of platform-related fights.)

Sixth, that said, Sandernistas or Bernie-backers or whatever?

If you're under 30, OK, a couple of days of lament. If you're over 30, time to put on your big boy or big girl pants now.

You've got three options for the future:
1. Vote Hillary
2. Vote Green
3. Sit out.

If "option 4" even thinks of crossing your minds, you've got problems indeed.

As I've said before, I want you to vote Green. But, per friend Brains (and yes, there's still time a-plenty) I'm kind of skeptical about how many of you will make that choice.

Otherwise, no, the Green Party isn't winning this year's presidential election. But real, true change in the US political system will take time and heavy lifting from top down and bottom up. Getting state legislators changed. Getting state election laws more friendly to third parties. Getting the US to be at least a modicum more like a parliamentary government and dethroning the imperial presidency. Voting rights. More.

That said, the same three apply to Sanders himself. He can tell his followers — with various degrees of either resignation or enthusiasm, and either directly or between the lines — to:
1. Vote Hillary
2. Vote Green
3. Sit out.

I suspect he'll do No. 1, with about as much enthusiasm as Ted Kennedy in 1980. Which is too bad.

Ted didn't have a Green Party — where he wouldn't have fit, anyway — or a national level Socialist party as an alternative, and he was even more ensconced inside the Democratic Party than Sanders is.

Bernie's ensconced himself enough, though, that — sadly — I'll give you odds right now that we'll not get an option 2, a clarion call to Vote Green, from his lips.

So, that's why I'm making it.

Battling with #Clintonistas on Twitter

Twice in the past couple of days, and both times after tussles with Clintonistas who had blocked me before I could block them, Twitter froze my account because of "unusual activity" and made me change my password.

Well, assuming I'd been "reported to Twitter" by them on both occasions as well as blocked, I "reported" them back. And, if I think I need to, I am going to start becoming pre-emptive. (The first of them, via screen capture as reported to my email account, since, due to being blocked, it didn't show up in my notifications feed, is at left.)

I do use Twitter to log into Disqus and a few other things, but just about none of those has the "authority" to write for me as well, as after the first freeze-out, per Twitter note, I checked my app settings.

Therefore, it's most likely Clintonistas. So, fight fire with fire.

And, it's not just me. Multiple Twitter friends, including national left-liberal journalist Doug Henwood, have reported similar issues.

And, if I need to go "meta," I'll report Twitter's own account to Twitter if it's not going to start giving me more information on why my account is being frozen.

Given that I plan on gearing up Tweet Deck late this summer, assuming Clinton's the Democratic nominee, I don't need Twitter being as dickish as Facebook on steroids.

Many #Clintonistas seemingly think Hillary's shit doesn't stink

Riffing on Doug Henwood's book cover,
no, Hillary, it's not your turn, and also no,
neoliberal gender feminism Clintonistas,
it's not your token's turn, either.
Book for sale here, with other swag.

After yet another few days of "fun" on Facebook, which have me close to using FB Purity filer setting, that's my conclusion.

(Update: Per lies being spread around, mainly by the various kitchen sinks being thrown at Bernie Sanders, plus commenters on websites lying, claiming not to recognize the term Clintonista and more, many Clintonistas think their own shit doesn't stink either. The latest evidence is a screed from a long-time Harris County, Texas Democratic volunteer activist, whom I have blasted out of the water, along with Phil Bump of The Fix. More below.)

Per a Facebook status update of mine late in January:

I loooovvveee (the subset of) Clintonistas who appear to:

1. Assume that I think Sanders is perfect, which as all the blog post below, or this one about his big Georgetown speech, will show is untrue;

2. Think I'm unaware of some parts of Sanders' voting records, like the gun lawsuit immunity. Since I've blogged about this, even calling him a gun nut (later nuanced to being a gun nut on the left side of the aisle), then called him Just.Another.Politician.™ for how he said he'd support revising that bill, but only with amendments, that's obviously not the case.

2A. Don't know that I'm aware of ALL his history, going back to when he was a real socialist and how he's not so much today, that he's really no more than a left-side Democrat, and how I'm more socialist than he is on health care issues;

2B. Don't know that I know he's a semi-warhawk, just less of one than Clinton, when I've blogged about his sucking on the military teat, or how I've detailed how he's a semi-warhawk;

3. Come off as patronizing, even if they don't mean to, and never accept that they might appear to be patronizing, even if they aren't actually;

4. The usual, who don't know that my support for Sanders, at least as of now, is limited to the Democratic primary season only, and then, IF they realize what that actually means, raise the usual scare tactics about third-party voting.

Two other notes.

A. I'm not calling all Clinton backers "Clintonistas." For some, it's shallow support based on name recognition of her among Democratic candidates. For other backers, it may be more serious, but without the invective against Sanders backers, nor the near-total unwillingness to dialogue about anything negative, from negative polling numbers to negative email server news, and in between.

B. I'm not denying that "Berniebros" exist. However, I think they're a smaller set of Sanders' backers than Clintonistas are of hers. Also, if "vocal" or even "voluble" includes Inside the Beltway pundits and their "framing," and not just a Sanders site on Reddit, then Clintonistas are certainly more voluble. Besides, some alleged Berniebros either don't exist or are actually women.

I've already moved one in-the-tank Clintonista who will deny it, but is a diehard Hillaryite because of the "it's her turn" argument, from "friend" to "acquaintance." That is a minimum step with others, including secularists like the person above and a scientist who says, when presented with data contrary to his Clinton claims, that he doesn't know why people need to put Clinton down. 

All of this leads me to believe that a certain, and fairly large, subset of Clintonistas think her shit doesn't stink, that their arguments for her shit not stinking also don't stink, and that they assume every single Sanders supporter is a 19-year-old Berniebro living in his parents' basement while going to community college, and whose level of political information comes from little other than Sanders press releases.

And, Clintonistas who cite "Mr. X says this" or "Ms. Y who says that" then don't like to dialogue when their statements are put into context, including me pointing out how many of the Inside the Beltway crowd are wrong, often with clear neoliberal leanings, who pretend that the DNC isn't trying to stack the deck against Sanders.

Per these later paragraphs and bullet point No. 3, I think many Clintonistas don't care that they are patronizing, or when they're not actually patronizing, that they look that way.

And, especially for the "it's her turn" subset of Clintonistas, I do think there's a mix of desperation and anger in the air, anger such that, beyond a certain point, arguments against, or jokes about, Clinton, are inevitably going to be called sexist. I've already been on the receiving end of that.

There's certainly desperation behind the "he's better qualified" claim. First, it's just not provable. Second, if we go by years of service, Sanders has more years of service, in more different offices (mayor, Representative, Senator vs. Senator and Secretary of State). Plus, Sanders as a mayor has held elective executive office.

It's also intellectually dishonest to claim that, just because she hasn't been indicted, that Hillary Clinton doesn't have ethics issues. It could simply that both Hillary and Bill are "too big to indict." Ken Silverstein recently examined just how skeezy the Clinton Foundation is, for example. Of course Obama's DOJ wouldn't touch it, if it had done anything rising to the level of financial criminality. Indeed, Silverstein notes that Dear Leader gave part of his Nobel money to the foundation for Haiti relief. And a GOP prez likely wouldn't, either. That said, the foundation DID refile wrong tax forms. And, yes, Clintonistas, they were wrong. And, no, that didn't happen by accident.

Beond that, on the "no indictment" claim? Per a Tweet of mine, if that's the case, then one Richard Milhous Nixon was an ethical politician.

But, criminality isn't the only case in which a politician can be unethical.

Along this line, per Doug Henwood, it IS fair to blame Hillary for Bill's unethical politics. And, per an old cliche, which I've used before, Dick Morris noting she became "the manager of their joint political career" part illustrates well that Hillary Clinton wore the pants in that family.

When I first started this blog post, I said I wasn't at the point of unfollowing on Facebook those who are otherwise at least vaguely liberal, and/or secularists or alleged skeptics, but I'm getting closer to moving more and more of you to "acquaintance" level on Facebook, at a minimum.

I now change that, as I just did that. I've now blocked a friend of a friend, for either being an online troll in general, or else a Clintonista troll in general, and telling blatant lies even after being called out on them. Per this blog post, I've called out others on the latest lie, that Sanders took in more and/or spent more in Iowa.

Per a new, Feb. 10 discussion on Facebook, another Clintonista is now claiming equivalence between Iraq and Afghanistan, followed by the claim that Iraq was justified at the time. Well, in reality, 21 Democratic senators not named Clinton, along with Independent Jeffords and even GOPer Chafee, weren't hypnotized by Shrub, unlike Hillary, who is now claiming that. I expect to be blocking another Clintonista soon.

I think beyond the "it's her turn" take of some subset of feminists, that there's tribalism galore here. Is there tribalism among Sanders supporters? To a fair degree, yes. However, there's no 'it's her turn" subcurrent.

Next, of course, is the claim that Clinton is the most likely to win the general election. This is wrong, at least of this moment. Sanders outpolls her, in an average of polls, in competitions against, Trump, Cruz or Rubio. Yet, even a physicist at Sandia claims Hillary's the best candidate to defeat the GOP. That just shows that even scientists and "scientific skeptics" can be just as tribalist as anybody else, something I've said more than once before here.

Not every Clintonista is of this nature, though. Other Clinton backers, with or without that handle, have made "pragmatism" into a shibboleth, in place of substantive, consistent campaign positions. 

This even extends to Krugman, as even he is talking of the stereotypical "Berniebro" while becoming ever more an Inside the Beltway tool of Team Clinton. Thank doorknob I stopped regularly reading ANY of the NYT columnists, even him, on anything near a regular basis, though.

And, as far as their claims to pragmatism, they ignore that Sanders as mayor, AND also as Representative/Senator, whether pragmatic or whatever, has gotten a lot accomplished.

In contrast, Hillary Clinton as senator has a relatively thin track record. (Not as thin as Barack Obama, but, Clinton wasn't making the "pragmatism" or "get things done" in 2008.) Twenty Dems responded to a "takedown" rhetorical question from Carly Fiorina about what Clinton had done in general. Almost all talked about her time as either Secretary of State or as First Lady. Few talked about her time as Senator, and even when they did, it was more in terms of platitudes than actual legislation.

This all extends to Clintonista, or establishmentarian, media coverage, too.

First, it's arguable, per a bar graph about halfway down this piece, that there's been big media coverage bias against Sanders in some ways.

Some specific examples come not just from the establishmentarian punditry, but the neo-establishmentarian data crunchers.

Nate Silver tries to throw cold water on Sanders' chances, but take note that with all of his accuracy, Nate also has a whiff of Inside the Beltway cologne about him at times.

Throwing shade back at Nate, per NPR, Clinton had a 100-plus superdelegate lead on Obama early in the 2008 cycle. Yet more on that, with specific numbers, here. We know how that ended. Clinton's lead is bigger now because she announced earlier to what seemed less formidable opposition. (Remember how 2004 VP nominee John Edwards was the big tout before Babygate hit.)

Meanwhile, Silver's main polling analysis rival, Sam Wang, is claiming Iowa is must-win for Sanders. (Silver does, elsewhere, too.) He not only doesn't make that claim for Clinton, he makes it for no GOP candidate, either.

And, he goes beyond that to claim that Sanders must win by "a fairly large margin," essentially rejecting everything that Goodman and Jacobin state will happen, especially with good performances in both states. This simply isn't true, I don't think.

Sanders, per a post of mine yesterday about superdelegates, momentum and exposure, does need to win one of the two. (If he lost New Hampshire, it would be bad anyway.) But, no, he doesn't have to win Iowa, IMO. He does have to finish respectably second if he doesn't win, though.

But, let's say Sanders wins Iowa. Just wins it, but not by a huge margin. And then strongly wins New Hampshire.

Suddenly, in such a scenario, South Carolina is must-win territory for Clinton. I expect her to win it anyway, but ... it becomes a must-win state for her.

So, even the data crunchers will engage in "framing," folks, and don't forget it for a second.

For more on this issue, see what I eventually broke out into a separate piece, that Sanders, not Clinton, is the "can-do" candidate.  

In any case, remember that I'm only a Sanders supporter right now for the Democratic primaries.

And, for people on this blog, Facebook, or whatever, individually, I'm pretty anti-tribalist, unless there's a tribe of anti-tribalists.

But, I am a deliberate contrarian who likes giving you Clintonistas more and more of a smackdown the more and more you yawp (directly or indirectly, consciously or subconsciously) about it being "her turn."

And, thanks to Blogger's "featured post" option, I think this baby is going to stay featured for a while, just to piss off the Clintonistas even more.

And, given that active or inactive members of a current group of "progressive" Texas bloggers include a bankster in love with Clinton, and an old-hippie atheist who was OK with Kinky Friedman supporting school prayer, this is why I"m not only a Democrat, I'm also not a "liberal" or a "progressive." Look to the top to see how I self-identify, if I need a label.