Memorial Day 2016
Today is Memorial Day: a day in which we honor those who have paid the ultimate price so that you and I may go about our daily lives as free men and women. So often I think that people take our freedom for granted and just assume that because we are free we will always remain free, forgetting what it actually takes to ensure that we remain free.
There is one reason and one reason alone that we are able to sit here day after day and discuss what is happening in our government and write about how we feel about what is happening and that is our right to free speech. This is a right that many, many brave men and women have fought and have died for and we must not forget their sacrifice.There is not a single day that goes by that I do not think about the sacrifice that these people have made, but today is the day that we must all remember to step back and say thank you.
So while you are at your cookout with your families and your friends, while you are cooking on the grill, drinking a few beers, and laughing with the people that you most cherish, please take just a little time out to remember those that have died to make this day possible.
Here is the open thread for Sunday, May 29th. Please feel free to post links to interesting articles and to discuss whatever issues arise during the course of the day. Nothing is off-topic here.
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Here is The Clash performing “The Magnificent Seven” live. Enjoy:
frui diem
Donald Trump backs out of debate with Bernie Sanders
Would that it were…
While I do not support either candidate, earlier this week is seemed as if both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump pulled off a master stroke against Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton when they agreed to the possibility of debating each other before the California primary.
This would have been an unprecedented move during an ongoing primary season but it was intriguing to say the least. Bernie Sanders drew the wrath of the Democratic establishment by agreeing to debate Donald Trump for obvious reasons but he held serve and refused to back down. There was no downside for Bernie Sanders after challenging Hillary Clinton to a debate, in fact after the former Secretary of State refused to debate him this provided the Senator from Vermont a chance–paraphrasing Hillary Clinton–to bring her to heal.
There was not much of a downside for Donald Trump either, especially after he called for all proceeds to go to women’s health issues, because this provided him with a chance to embarrass his most likely opponent in the general election, but it is not to be because the billionaire businessman has backed down.
Here is more:
Earlier this week we learned that Hillary Clinton stated did not want to use an official State Department email address because she was concerned her personal emails would be exposed. I can understand that concern (especially with the seemingly shady deals surrounding The Clinton Foundation) however there is no reason why the former Secretary of State could not use an official email address for official business and a separate personal email address for personal business. People do it all the time…
In this post I mused that if Hillary Clinton was not savvy enough to manage two separate email accounts perhaps she is not savvy enough to run the country. And now it turns out, according to this story, that Hillary Clinton has no idea how to use email on a computer. (Of course this could be just another excuse.)
Here is more:
Donald Trump, as well as every single Republican office holder and those who support them, has been called a racist by the left in an attempt to intimidate the opposition into silence. Of course the left has always been portrayed, and feel themselves, as being the party of toleration and the voters as being color blind and above it all even while being the promulgators of identity politics.
So you can imagine my surprise when a black reporter for The Daily Beast, Keli Goff, called out the racism of Bernie Sanders supporters. Here is some of what she wrote:
MSNBC host on Hillary Clinton’s email scandal: ‘it feels like she’s lying straight out’
Hillary Clinton does not want to admit it publicly but privately she knows the State Department Inspector General’s report was devastating because it showed us that she has been lying to the American people, broke State Department rules, and possibly is in violation of Federal law. It was so devastating in fact that the main propaganda arm of the Democratic Party, MSNBC, was forced to admit “it feels like she is lying straight out.”
Here is what MSNBC co-host Mika Brzezinski had to say about the report and Hillary Clinton:
“Here are the things that, like over time, we remember here, her saying repeatedly it was allowed. A private server, set up in her home, by an IT guy who was given immunity, and his emails are missing. And she even joked when she was asked, and I think in a high school gym, did you wipe the server, meaning get rid of everything so no one could see it and she joked about it being with a cloth. And, I mean, I really don’t want to be the one delivering this, but, I’ve got to tell you, this is really hard to believe. It feels like she’s lying straight out.”
Andrea Mitchell could not bring herself to go that far but she did say there were “inconsistencies.” Here is what she said:
State Department Inspector General finds Hillary Clinton violated the department’s email rules
According to this story a State Department watchdog has determined that Hillary Clinton violated the department’s email rules by using a private email server on which to conduct ALL her official State Department business.
Here is more:
A State Department watchdog concluded that Hillary Clinton failed to comply with the agency’s policies on records while using a personal email server that was not — and, officials say, would never have been — approved by agency officials, according to a report released to lawmakers on Wednesday.
The report also notes that she had an “obligation to discuss using her personal email account” but did not get permission from the people who would have needed to approve the technology, who said they would not have done so, if they had been asked.
“According to the current [chief information officer] and assistant secretary for diplomatic security, Secretary Clinton had an obligation to discuss using her personal email account to conduct official business with their offices, who in turn would have attempted to provide her with approved and secured means that met her business needs,” the report reads. “However, according to these officials, [the relevant people] did not — and would not — approve her exclusive reliance on a personal email.”
This is not news in and of itself because it was pretty well known the former Secretary of State violated the rules by using a private email server but the report also found she did not properly preserve her official records and did not surrender all of her emails before leaving office as required under the Federal Records Act:
Below is an interesting video I found over at Gateway Pundit. This video shows Hillary Clinton during a debate earlier this year with Bernie Sanders in which she said she went to Wall Street and told them to “cut it out, quit foreclosing on homes” while she was representing them as the Senator from New York. The video then juxtaposes this statement with a 2007 comment when she said some homeowners should have known they were “getting in over their heads.”
Funny how she does not mention that anymore now that she is running for President, isn’t it? It makes one wonder what she actually said to Wall Street in all those paid speeches…
malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium
The left does not care about Hillary Clinton’s email scandal and the possibility that she broke the law and Bernie Sanders even claimed he was sick and tired of hearing about her emails. But according to this story we might have found an email issue the left will be interested in.
Back during one of the debates Bernie Sanders, who opposes fracking, tried to call out Hillary Clinton on her convoluted stance on fracking. The former Secretary of State’s last position on fracking was that she opposed it where the people opposed it and supported it where the people supported it–or something like that because she also went on to say “we have to have a system in place that prevents further fracking.” She is trying to have it both ways in an attempt to cover up her previous support for the procedure.
However newly obtained emails show that Hillary Clinton was actively promoting fracking in foreign nations during her tenure as Secretary of State:
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