Hillary Clinton's What Happened--Table of Contents Leaked

On Monday we received two screen shots of what we believe to be the Table of Contents page of Hillary Clinton's upcoming book What Happened. Our source, a connection in publishing circles, has requested to remain anonymous. Following are the chapter headings. Original screen shots below.

Eric Mader
Clay Testament
Editor in Chief

What Happened:
Contents
Preface

Introduction

Ch. 1: A Life in Public Service

Ch. 2: My Turn

Ch. 3: Campaign Kickoff: A Running Start

Ch. 4: A Woman in the Lion’s Den

Ch. 5: A Better America

Ch. 6: Hollywood Nights: George, Amal, Meryl and I

Ch. 7: Bill’s Baggage

Ch. 8: I Never Liked that Man, Jeffrey Epstein

Ch. 9: Things Start to Go Wrong

Ch. 10: John Podesta: Friend, Art Connoisseur, Pizza Lover

Ch. 11: The Blankfeins are Such Wonderful People

Ch. 12: Bernie Sanders: Marxist

Ch. 13: A Strong Wall Street is a Strong America

Ch. 14: Comey Drops the Investigation

Ch. 15: We Kill Seth Rich

Ch. 16: Bleaching Emails to Protect National Security

Ch. 17: I Need to Remember to Stay Hydrated

Ch. 18: The Russian Hack Idea

Ch. 19: Donald Trump and Rape Culture

Ch. 20: How I Almost Killed Huma

Ch. 21: The Final Stretch

Ch. 22: Our Misogynist Racist Working Class

Ch. 23: Whose Fault Was It?

The FBI, Vladimir Putin, the Obamas, the New York Times, James Comey, Huma, Suburban Women, Bernie Sanders, Julian Assange, John Podesta, Corporate Media, Misogyny, My Campaign Staff, Aspartame, Macedonia, Our Misogynist Racist Working Class, Alexandre Dumas, Facebook, Pollsters, Harambe, Meryl, El niño, Anthony Weiner, Ohio’s Department of Motor Vehicles, Twitter, Chipotle

Ch. 24: We Kill Klaus Eberwein

Ch. 25: Looking Ahead: 2020?

Index

Original Screen Shots
(Click to enlarge):



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ENDGAME: Why I’m finished with our liberal left

Maybe you’ve noticed this too.

I'm fifty now, and have been on the left my whole life. I remember clearly in the '90s and early 2000s how the single most infuriating thing about debating with Republicans was that they never allowed the conversation to stay on the point under discussion. Whenever you'd get them anywhere near giving a clear answer on something, or recognizing the simple facts you'd raised, they'd quick shift to some tangential issue: "But what about . . . ?" The constant derailment was maddening.

Just this week I've realized how many hours during the past year I've fallen into discussions just like this with Democrats. I've been voting Democrat my whole life, and used to have substantive policy discussions with other Democrats around me. But for a long time now, I keep running into fellow Democrats who are almost zombielike in the mechanical way they deflect. Jittery bullshit machines. It's the same runaround I used to face with most Republicans. The same nervous refusal to get anywhere near certain facts. And worst of all: it feels the same.

Which has finally convinced me of something I began to suspect around 2012. Democrats are the new Republicans. Standard issue GOP Republicans are still the old Republicans, I’d say. But Democrats are the new dumb kids on the block.

Of course now the Democratic topic du jour is the horror of Trump, of his every step and move and utterance. I agree with them on many of these things, but not all. But the key thing they still refuse to recognize: It was our own party’s choice to run Clinton that got Trump elected. It was our own party’s systematic snubbing of Bernie Sanders that led to Clinton’s win in the primaries.

As for Trump himself, putting aside the very serious flaws in his character, which may well prove fatal to his administration, the fact is he has already done three things that should immensely please the left: he summarily killed TPP, he granted union leaders a more cordial and substantive meeting than any Democratic president has given them in decades, and he signed an executive order banning his administration staff from lobbying for five years after their tenure is up.

Would Hillary have dared do any of these things? I highly doubt it. Yet each of them, looked at in itself, is a step in the right direction for American workers and government. Amazingly, on these three fronts Trump is actually to the left of Obama or Clinton.

I say I’ve voted Democrat my whole life, but I did not vote for Clinton this time. I just couldn't. The gulf has grown too vast. In fact I can hardly even talk to lifelong Dem friends about politics these days. They are unhinged. I don't see it as a symptom of fear in the face of Trump either. I see it as a new, uncanny, almost essentialist self-righteousness beyond argument. They assume they were "right", are "right" and will always be "right". Just because they are themselves.

What has happened to the party I long supported? I’m disgusted at the shallowness of political discussions among most Dems. Everything is identity politics and SJW cant. As for any substantive vision of America as a nation of particular people with a tradition and history, forget it. The only history they see is the history of grievances of this or that identity group. Some of those groups have real grievances, yes; others are clearly just riding the grievance cart for all it's worth.

Regarding serious issues, namely the hollowing out of the working class and the corporatization of everything, it’s clearly all peripheral to most Dems. They’re almost uniquely interested in ensuring people don’t say mean things, or offend people through “microaggressions”, or question this or that sub-doctrine of this or that SJW orthodoxy on immigration, LGBT rights, trans bathrooms, whatever. If you don’t agree with the whole list of their established doctrines, they look at you askance and start calling names.

The supposed left party in my country is no longer even on the left. It has become little more than a virtue-signaling gaggle of corporate puppets. And its full-throated adoption of neocon foreign policy makes it harder than ever to distinguish it from the original neocons around George W. Bush.

Last year much of the talk before the election centered on choosing the “lesser of two evils”. My thinking on this question hasn’t changed. Where Trump represents a kind of flailing, all-too-human evil, Clinton represents an incremental, methodical evil: the evil of a steady corporate takeover of what was once a democratic nation and is hardly so any longer.

But the corporate corruption of the Democratic Party is obvious and has been widely discussed. What hasn't been discussed is the intellectual corruption of so many Democratic voters and media talking heads. I don't see any hope for these folks. They've become machine-like in their knee-jerk reactions. This tangible shift, starting around 2012, has pushed me steadily away from this American “left”. And how would it not? I don’t share their social vision, I don’t share their corporate globalizing plans (as in TPP, now thankfully obsolete) and I don’t share their newfound hatred of open debate and free speech. It's this gang that poses the real authoritarian threat to our republic, more so than Donald Trump.

I am no longer with them. I'm actually glad they got their asses kicked in 2016. I will not be helping them in word or vote from here on out.

Check out my book Idiocy, Ltd. and begin the long, hard reckoning.

Elderly Lady Threatens to Blow Up White House

A Disassociated Press Report, Washington, D.C., January 21, 2017

by Eric Mader

An elderly lady participating in the Hillary Clinton Memorial Women’s March in Washington, D.C. yesterday threatened to blow up the White House.

The lady made the threat over a microphone before a large crowd, though march organizers were unclear how she had gotten on the stage.

“She looked kind of muscly and wiry for a woman her age,” said Susan Wrighteous, a participant who heard the threat. “I’m thinking she strong-armed the mic from someone.”

“I think this was a senior citizen angry and confused about all the commotion in Washington,” another marcher said. “She’d had a lot of botox and stuff, but you could tell she was like 70 or something.”

The elderly lady was not arrested, according to reports. Asked how she had gotten into the event, Clinton Memorial March organizer Linda Sarsour said anyone who pledged that they were pro-abortion was allowed in regardless of age.

“The rules will get stricter next time we have this march,” Sarsour added. “Like nobody who eats pork will be allowed in.”

Sarsour, prominent among the march's organizers, is a well-known Muslim activist who is pro-Sharia law and has connections to Hamas. Kind of like Hillary Clinton, the candidate whose failed bid for the presidency was memorialized by the angry crowd of abortion enthusiasts who took part in the event.

Twitter account of Women's March organizer Linda Sarsour

Check out my book Idiocy, Ltd. and begin the long, hard reckoning.

Hey, Clintonites: A Christmas Message

Hey, Clintonites. Why not finally recognize where you're at? Shoulder deep in mud and cognitive dissonance. And still digging. Really, isn't it time to put those shovels down?

First we had all the talk from the liberal press of election rigging, then Stein's recount push. Result: Trump only gained a larger lead in Wisconsin. And as for evidence of possibly systematic rigging, there was some in Detroit: Clinton territory. It didn't make for good optics, as they say.

Then you got yourselves into this faithless electors campaign. Result: Trump lost two electors, Clinton lost five.

What's next? Try to airlift Hillary onto the stage at the inauguration?

Here are the two hard pills you folks need to swallow: 1) Hillary lost this election, as did her party generally. 2) Had you insisted early on that Bernie Sanders be the candidate, rather than Miss Wall Street Baggage, Trump would now be launching a new reality show rather than preparing to move into the White House.

So it’s time to climb out of the neoliberal pit you're all in. Put those shovels down while we can still see the tops of your heads.

And Merry Christmas! It's the holiday where we celebrate the birth of Jesus, by a long shot the most hardcore social justice warrior of the ancient world (INCLUDING on women's fundamental equality) aside from being, of course, the Messiah.

Sincerely,

Eric Mader

Check out my book Idiocy, Ltd. and begin the long, hard reckoning.

Russian Interference in Wisconsin Recount: Experts

Eric Mader, The Disassociated Press, Madison, December 13, 2016

Evidence of Russian interference in the recent Wisconsin recount is mounting, according to experts interviewed by the Disassociated Press.

Election and polling experts cite “abnormalities” in the outcome of the statewide recount, and point to Moscow as the likely source of organized meddling that occurred in several key counties across the state.

Final tallies announced Monday showed that Hillary Clinton still had not won the state, and that Donald Trump picked up an additional 131 votes. Final totals put Trump’s count at 1,405,284 votes, 22,748 more than Clinton.

“It is my firm belief that advanced mind-control techniques were employed by Russian-trained agents to throw off this count,” David Swishe, an election expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"Agents of the Russian state were deployed outside county clerk’s offices as the recount unfolded," Swishe said. "They used telepathic mind-control to make election workers visualize Clinton ballots as Trump ballots."

“In Waukesha County, at a Starbucks just next to the clerk’s office, a very Russian-looking man was observed reading Dostoyevsky on more than one day during the recount,” he added. “It’s very suspicious.”

Lisa, a Women’s Studies student and self-described polling expert, agrees that the recount was hacked.

“I conducted exit polls on Facebook the day after the election,” she said. “Every single one of my friends voted for Hillary. Really there is no way Trump won. It's scientifically impossible.”

Both Swishe and Lisa conclude, based on their evidence, that Clinton won the state by at least a couple hundred thousand votes.

“We’re starting a petition to push for a redo of the recount,” Swishe said. “And we’ll be placing Mind Protectors around all the sites where the recount is happening.”

“I had to read Dostoyevsky myself in a lit class,” he added. “The Brothers Raskolnikov. Let me tell you first hand, that book sucks. And these Russians we have today suck even more.”

Check out my Idiocy, Ltd. at Amazon.com and begin the long, hard reckoning.

Hillary More Dangerous

One candidate in this race is talking dangerous nonsense on Syria. Can you guess which?
Both major candidates are unacceptable, everyone knows it, but the constant refrain from the Clinton-backers is that we need to support her because Trump is “dangerous”.

The argument isn’t bad on certain levels. I think Trump’s character is a major major issue, no doubt about it. But in other and maybe more fundamental respects (in concrete policy stances for instance) there are reasons to see Clinton as potentially the more dangerous of the two. And that’s really saying something.

Why do I think she is possibly more dangerous?

Forget pay-to-play, the Wall Street corruption, the glaring attempts to obstruct public oversight of her State Department tenure, etc. All that is bad enough, and should have disqualified her. It maybe would have disqualified her if our FBI director had stuck to the text of the relevant laws in July. But forget all this. The real problem is Hillary’s militarism, which comes out glaringly in her current policy positions.

Soon enough a Clinton administration might very well bring us into open conflict with Russia over Syria, which could end a lot worse for us than anything we’ve ever experienced as a nation. And it’s not a stretch to imagine such a conflict either.

In the third debate, Hillary proposed we establish no-fly zones in Syria. As many have pointed out, this would be a very dangerous move, one that might quickly lead to us shooting Russian fighter jets from the sky. And how would we prevent things from escalating, especially given the thin ice on which we currently stand vis a vis Russia in Ukraine and the Baltic states?

Hillary’s willingness to “go into Syria” is in my mind on a par for stupidity with the Bush administration’s eagerness to take out Saddam. No, it is probably even stupider, given Russia already has a major stake in the Syrian conflict. What would prevent Hillary from pursuing her preferred course?

If corporate finance could convince these people that Glass-Steagall should be repealed (cf. Bill Clinton) and that the financial WMD called “derivatives” are acceptable instruments of trade, then corporate military could convince Hillary that being able to impose our will on Syria is worth risking war with Russia. To listen to her, she is already convinced. Never mind actual WMD this time in the form of Russia’s nuclear capability.

Blowing up the world economy so Wall Street could play blackjack 24/7 with our savings was bad enough. How about blowing up North American and half of Asia?

Our Washington hawks simply can’t seem to let the Middle East fall into a sane balance of power. And Hillary has always been on the hawkish side of the hawk camp. Many of us are getting damned tired of hearing about Russia from these people. That we screwed up massively in Iraq, creating ISIS and giving Baghdad to the Shia--this is not Vladimir Putin’s fault. It’s the fault of our own political class, who can’t seem to say No to a war if the corporate/military lobby wants one.

With all that’s happened since 2003, that the Hillary team can’t simply let Putin protect his ally Assad shows a Washington elite just itching to commit another crime against sanity. Overreach seems the default position for these people. Guess it pays the bills, huh?

As against this, we hear constantly that Trump is dangerous because of . . . racism, bigotry, his attitudes to women. These personal faults, to the extent they exist, don’t stand up to war with Russia in terms of a threat. In any case, I don’t believe Trump could establish American fascism, as some have been screaming. He simply doesn’t have a coherent enough ideology. Trump is no Mussolini, though he may well be an American Berlusconi.

On Syria, Trump is basically right. If Assad falls, it is jihadists who will take over, whether they call themselves ISIS or not. Trump recognizes that the best thing for American interests (to the extent those interests are not identical with corporate interests) is to let Russia continue to protect Assad, and let Russia and Assad knock themselves out bombing the ragtag horde of jihadists now fighting the Syrian state. Hillary, meanwhile, sounds literally nuts on this issue. And it’s a nuttiness we cannot afford--not any more, and certainly not this time, not with Russia deeply involved.

Trump is a loose cannon and narcissist of the first order. He is, however, not nearly as likely to continue trying to remake every state in the Middle East through American firepower. His positions are more trade oriented, isolationist, ultimately pragmatic and domestic in scope. The corporations don’t want pragmatic, or domestic, and so they hate him. But what represents the real danger for us at present--the unfettered military/corporate power Hillary shills for, the ongoing march of aggressive globalization, or the politically incorrect behavior of a Donald Trump?

At the very least, Trump and Clinton both represent serious dangers. The assumption that we must vote Clinton to “protect us” from Trump, however, seems to me a case of willful blindness.

Check out my book Idiocy, Ltd. and begin the long, hard reckoning.

Abedin Emails Reveal Clinton Cabinet Picks: Source

Eric Mader, The Disassociated Press, Washington, D.C.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, an FBI source with access to the emails on Anthony Weiner’s seized laptop has informed the Disassociated Press that one email contains a list of Hillary Clinton’s likely cabinet picks. The email in question was written by Clinton aide Huma Abedin to John Podesta on October 4th. The Disassociated Press is unable to verify the authenticity of the email, but has decided to publish the contents as received.

The email indicates both uncertainties on Clinton’s part and, in some cases, unprecedented double appointments. The full text reads as follows:

John:

HRC wanted me to share this list with you and get input. We should have an amended list within ten days.

CABINET PICKS

Attorney General: Loretta Lynch
Federal Reserve Chairman: Lloyd Blankfein?
Securities and Exchange Commission: Lloyd Blankfein? (could Lloyd do both?)
Surgeon General: Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Secretary of State: Chelsea Clinton
Secretary of Defense: George W. Bush
Secretary of Education: Beyonce and Jay-Z (can we do double appointments?)
Health and Human Services: Cecile Richards
Agriculture: Hugh Grant (not the actor; never liked the actor--snooty)
CIA Director: Matt Damon
Secretary of Family and Childhood Development: Caitlyn Jenner
Homeland Security Head: We’ll just use my own server
Press Secretary: Anderson Cooper? Richard Quest? (Either would be great. How many will CNN let us take altogether? Call them)
Secretary of the Interior: Huma
Secretary of Religious Freedom: Rachel Maddow
Secretary of Secretaries: Debbie Wassermann Schultz
Secretary of Bill’s Entertainment: Jeffrey Epstein
Secretary of Pantsuits: Captain Kangaroo



Check out my book Idiocy, Ltd. and begin the long, hard reckoning.

Trump or Clinton? Neither!

Happens all the time these days. I post something on Facebook indicating I don’t support Hillary and immediately get this from Jane, a friend of a friend: “So your thought is to elect Trump? And that would be better?”

Instead of writing another editorial, I’ll just give you our ensuing dialogue.

Eric Mader: No. My thought is not "to elect Trump”. My thought is rather: A vote is a vote FOR someone, not merely a vote against someone else. Hillary does not deserve the votes of honest citizens, and I refuse to swell her numbers (and thus the illusion of her legitimacy) by giving her my vote. I will no longer join in the Democrat vs. Republican race to the bottom, but will vote third party. The mainstream Democrats deserve to lose, and I'm willing to take the risk of Trump in office if it will help delegitimize these utter fakes.

Jane Doe: Wow. If Trump wins, our world will be pretty scary, and if you supported the tenets of Bernie you will be in for a rude awakening. Unfortunately, at this time a vote for third party is a vote for Trump.

Eric Mader: You’re just being patronizing, Jane. I'm well aware of what rude awakenings there may be. And no: A vote for a third party is emphatically NOT a vote for Trump. A vote for a third party is a vote for a third party. That's why it's called "a vote for a third party".

Jane Doe: Call it what you will, but a Trump presidency certainly would not "delegitimize these utter fakes". He appears to be the biggest fake of them all. And because you are a US citizen you can express your opinions freely and vote for who you want. Good luck.

Eric Mader: Your response is characteristic. Realizing that I will not be voting Hillary, you immediately change the subject to Trump and how he's a bigger fake than Hillary--"the biggest fake of them all". I think which of these two is the bigger fake is arguable, because they are fakes in such different ways, but ultimately the argument is beside the point.

If a place offered you lunch with the choice of shit in a bowl or shit on a stick, your logic would have to be that the shit on the stick is the only wise choice because, look, the amount of shit in the bowl is larger. My choice is to not eat lunch. Who is wiser? Which is the course of action more likely to put that shit restaurant out of business, yours or mine?

I am not voting for Trump, so I'm not sure why you even mention him. The only way to delegitimize fakes in a democracy is not to vote for them. I'm not going to vote for them. You, however, are in the camp that keeps saying: "Mm, this shit on a stick, it really isn't that bad. Creamy actually. Mm, everyone should eat here."

I worked hard to elect Obama twice, the first time enthusiastically, the second time not so much. For me, this election is not between Trump and Hillary, it's between the possibility of democracy and the reality of corporate control over our whole political process. Whether you can see this or not, it is Hillary who is the consummate corporate candidate, which is why, surprise surprise, so many Republican establishment figures are now coming out in her favor. They're doing so because their Republican commitments, all along, have not been to maintaining a democratic republic but rather to furthering the smooth corporate takeover of our republic--ensuring, in short, that government continues to sell out the population to corporate interests. They know--which is bizarre, isn't it?--that the GOP candidate, this time, is actually a less reliable corporate rubber stamp than the Democratic candidate.

Anyhow, good luck to you. I'm fifty now, and I won't be supporting these people any more. I've spent thousands upon thousands of hours in politics, going back to my undergrad years, and am no longer giving the benefit of the doubt to anyone who's spent as much time sucking Wall Street and the corporate elites as Hillary has.


Check out my book Idiocy, Ltd. and begin the long, hard reckoning.

The "Deplorables" Reply to Hillary Clinton

“Basket of Deplorables”?

That’s what Hillary Clinton called tens of millions of Americans yesterday, claiming that those opposed to her were racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic.

I know the current liberal PC definition of terms like racist or homophobic, and it's likely I'd be called these things by many an unhinged activist. So I'm with the deplorables myself. And I feel solidarity with them.

We see through you, Hillary. Play your PC “-phobic” card all you want. We’re not buying it. Over the past dozen years, liberals have thrown around the word "bigot" so much that the word has lost its meaning. It is debased. All one has to do is disagree with the robots of political correctness on any small point and one is a bigot. I disagree with them on many many points.

We Americans who see what's going on aren't afraid of your smear words because we see the illegitimate way you define these words. And the way you, Hillary, use them to distract people from their real problems. Namely: Corporate control of our government. Namely: You yourself and everything you stand for.

No. Just because we think Black America needs to officially condemn its gangsta rap culture and take more responsibility for its communities doesn’t make us racist. It makes us awake to what is happening.

Just because we think LGBT activists don’t have the right to dictate sex and gender norms for our whole culture doesn’t make us homophobic. It makes us, uh, sane.

Just because we call radical Islamic terrorism by its real name doesn’t make us Islamophobic.

Just because we don’t of approve our elected leaders (your party, Hillary) exporting our jobs to foreign countries doesn’t make us xenophobic.

We see through you, Hillary. We’ve watched official Washington, your party included, sell us down the river for two decades now. Everything we know about you tells us you’ll do nothing but sell the last bit of us left to be sold.

We see that you have nothing but scorn for our values and traditions. Your former boss, Barack Obama, has shown this scorn time and again. We know you are full of such scorn too. Your words yesterday prove it.

In our minds, Hillary, the real deplorables are those who imagine you will stand for working Americans. We know very well you will not. You will stand for your PC special interest groups on the one hand, and Wall Street and the corporate boards on the other.

We see through you. We don’t accept your insulting labels. We are not "racist", "homophobic", etc., etc. We are Americans with our own vision of what our country should be. And we aren’t going to give you our vote in November. Count on it.

The Illogic of FBI Director James Comey: In a Nutshell

Having my coffee this morning I was treated to an interesting bit of political theater. FBI director James Comey first explained in detail how Hillary Clinton was guilty of committing a felony under federal law, then explained that his bureau would not recommend she be indicted for that felony.

Huh?

The laws under which Clinton could be indicted for her use of a private email server criminalize at least two things. One might either 1) intend to transmit classified information, or 2) show gross negligence in the handing of classified information.

Listening to Comey, I can only conclude that he intentionally obscured the importance of the “or” that separates 1) and 2). Comey read it as an and, implying that no prosector would pursue a case against Clinton because the investigation found no evidence of intent to transmit classified information.

But our law doesn’t merely criminalize intent, it criminalizes gross negligence as well.

Bizarrely, according to Comey’s logic, to commit a felony one must both intend to betray secrets and then show gross negligence in handling those secrets. This simply doesn’t make legal, or even practical, sense. If I intend to betray information, I’m not then going to show gross negligence in handling it. The relevant statues refer to two distinct crimes, having nothing to do with each other. To be guilty of one, Clinton doesn’t have to be guilty of both, as any prosecutor would know.

It gets worse. Comey himself stated that top secret information may very well have been stolen by our enemies thanks to Clinton’s insistence on transmitting it through her unsecured private email server:

We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial e-mail accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account. We also assess that Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail domain was both known by a large number of people and readily apparent. She also used her personal e-mail extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related e-mails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account.

As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was responsible for handling classified information carefully. She knowingly did the opposite. Which is why the following sentence from Comey literally contradicts itself:

Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.

Federal law already makes gross negligence a crime for which one may be imprisoned up to ten years. I don’t know about you, but I don’t find any clear difference between “extremely careless” and “grossly negligent”. Comey basically laid out why the Secretary of State is guilty of a felony.

What kind of information was compromised? Clinton has repeatedly said that no classified information was transmitted through her private server. She was lying. Comey:

For example, seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation. In addition to this highly sensitive information, we also found information that was properly classified as Secret by the U.S. Intelligence Community at the time it was discussed on e-mail (that is, excluding the later “up-classified” e-mails).

None of these e-mails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because all of these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff, like those found at Departments and Agencies of the U.S. Government—or even with a commercial service like Gmail.

There is no excuse for this. Hillary Clinton knew full well what she was doing, and although she may not have intended to compromise classified information, it is obvious she didn’t much care if it got compromised. The evident priority for Clinton in all of this was being able to conduct business through her own server and email account, from which she could then delete and scrub whatever she liked without any oversight or permanent record. And why would she want to do such scrubbing?

Study a bit about the Clinton Foundation and you may get an inkling why.

Eric Mader

Check out my Idiocy, Ltd. at Amazon.com and begin the long, hard reckoning.

George Clooney and the Amazing Hillary-Hypocrisy Machine

“Grab me my nose-clips, would you? . . . No, not those, the stronger ones. With the locking springs. Yeah, those. Thanks.”

“What are you writing?”

“About the Clinton campaign.”

“Well, if you’re gonna write about her why not keep your nose clips by your computer?”

“Hm. Good idea.”

So after George and Amal Clooney hosted two fund-raising dinners for Hillary Clinton, one with seats going for $353,400 apiece to sit at a table with the candidate, George went and lamented to NBC’s Chuck Todd that it was “an obscene amount of money” they’d raised ($15,000,000) and that “it’s ridiculous we should have this kind of money in politics.”

The interview will be airing this morning.

“The Sanders campaign, when they talk about it, is absolutely right,” Clooney said. “I think that, you know, we had some protesters last night when we pulled up in San Francisco, and they’re right to protest. They’re absolutely right. It is an obscene amount of money.”

It’s like hosting a Cocaine is Life dinner where everyone gets a little mountain of coke to snort and then going on TV the next day to complain about how drugs ruin society.

Really, the level of hypocrisy tolerated in our mainstream Dem circles is becoming stratospheric. Honestly I don’t think the GOP has much on this crowd when it comes to sheer doubletalking bullshit.

Meanwhile Bernie Sanders was at the Vatican underlining, in a very well-crafted speech, how his thinking on economic policy dovetails with Catholic Social Doctrine Teaching and the priority Pope Francis has given to fighting the evils inherent in unfettered capitalism.

When it comes to Sanders vs. Clinton on economics we could perhaps talk about the difference between Catholic Social Doctrine Teaching and the Hollywood/Goldman Sachs Social Doctrine Teaching.

C'mon, New York. Do the right thing Tuesday. Use this primary to show the world you understand which of these candidates is a Democrat and which is a “Democrat”.

Eric Mader

Check out my book Idiocy, Ltd. at Amazon.com and begin the long, hard reckoning.

Why I Will Not Vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Election

It’s time for Main Street Americans to cut ties
with “mainstream” Democrats.
[Update 10/21/16: A lot has happened since I posted this piece. A hell of a lot. And all of it has only confirmed my basic position. I will be voting for neither of the major party candidates. --E.M.]

I’ve voted Democrat in every election I could since becoming an adult--now thirty-plus years worth of Democratic votes. Still, I will not be voting for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. As an American Catholic on the democratic left, it's clear to me Hillary will not work for the things I believe in, and will in fact work for many things I don’t.

To anyone paying attention, certain unavoidable truths have hit home in recent years. As follows: Mainstream Democrats never actually fight on issues where they risk conflict with Wall Street or the corporate boardrooms. Obama, on whom so many hopes were pinned, including my own, was a depressing enough example of this. The Democratic Party represents a politics I can no longer support.

Since the Bill Clinton administration, Americans have lived in a one-party state. At present, the only substantive differences between our Democrats and Republicans, the only issues where they dare stand strongly for or against a policy, are when the outcome doesn't matter to the corporate elites now pushing our country, and our planet, into the ground.

Thus Democrats can be for Planned Parenthood, Republicans against it, because at the end of the day the 1% doesn't care if you're a mother of two or have had three abortions. The 1% doesn’t care because it doesn’t affect their bottom line. Likewise with gay marriage. Wall Street can continue its smoke-and-mirror games with our economy regardless of how marriage is redefined.

If you’ve been watching, like me, you’ll have noticed that these sex and reproduction issues are the only ones where mainstream Democrats actually take a strong stand, or indeed any stand.

Frankie Boyle in the Guardian put it perfectly. Assuming the Democrats will nominate Hillary:

The reality of what [Americans are] voting on in this election is something nobody dare express. They’re voting on the exact speed of the drift toward a future of armies run by corporations corralling permanently traveling communities of cooks, cleaners and sex workers, as they underbid each other outside the entrances to gated communities to ensure they’re the ones let inside to service the fortunate.

By playing out sex and reproduction issues, Democrats somehow manage to bill themselves as "progressive", as “securing our future”. The American public, now childishly enamored of anything related to sexual rights, takes the bait. The public falls for what I’ve previously called the Progressive Corporate Agenda.

Meanwhile Republicans play the other side of this same small spectrum of issues, and get away with portraying themselves as "conservative" or "standing for tradition".

Looked at through the lens of left and right political theory, our Democrats aren't "left" or "progressive" in any meaningful sense and our Republicans aren't "conservative" or "traditional". They both abet the continued corporate takeover of our democracy and they're both big government parties, each handing out the bulk of their welfare checks to Wall Street and the corporations. It’s a bait-and-shift scam, and those who continue to call it "democracy" can only do so because they refuse to step back and look at the bigger picture.

And so we've finally come to live, as I’ve said, under One Ruling Party, with the difference that our ruling party, unlike China’s, dresses up in two different colored jerseys so as to play out the same rigged game every few years. It’s bread and circuses, now without the bread.

Hillary Clinton is a circus candidate. Of course “everyone should like her”, as she said in the last debate. Everyone likes circuses, no?

I for one will no longer give the Democratic Party a pass on this fake leftism. I'm Catholic, politically on the left, an old school left, and hardly enthusiastic about the party’s current obsessive priorities. In years past, regardless of my differences on certain issues, I've stood with the Democrats because real democracy and social justice matter to me. As a Catholic, I’ve been able to put Democrats' mistaken support for abortion aside because I counted on the party to bring substantive progress in other areas: protection of jobs, sane conduct of war and peace, solid public education, a fairer playing field. Our current president’s performance (the ever-expanding surveillance state, the TPP, now this) has brought a turning point in my thinking. No more mainstream Democrats for me. No. For me, it's Bernie or bust.

Come what may, I won't be voting for Hillary. I am on the left, she is a right-wing, pro-corporate candidate who can be counted on to stand up for abortion, an ever-growing LGBT dogmatism, the corporate elite, and precious little else. There’s nothing in it for me, as I support neither abortion so-called “rights”, nor the growing arrogance of gay activists’ witch hunts against any who dissent from their ever more stringent orthodoxies. (BTW: Though I’d always stood on the side of gay and lesbian rights, going back to the 1980s, I believe America’s new “marriage equality” agenda needs to provide space and dignity for those in dissent. Rather than reasonable constitutional legal protections, however, people of faith now face ostracism, crippling legal suits, the destruction of careers. This is wrong; it is un-American. Marriage is not a reality that has been “decided” by the Supreme Court, which has no mandate to decide any such thing. No, marriage at present is contested. As a committed pluralist, I believe both sides in this contest deserve space to live in conformity with their beliefs. That is not however what is happening, by any stretch of the imagination. Whether law suits, ruined careers, attacks directed at religious charities and schools--it is all due to a new gaythoritarianism that grows more arrogant with each passing season. My earlier support for the LGBT movement has waned to near zero. Once bullied, they have become the biggest bullies on the block. To assert that LGBT activists have no right to dictate the whole culture’s marriage beliefs, education policy re: gender, etc.--this is not “homophobia”, it is merely life in a pluralistic culture.)

Yes, Sanders is with Clinton on these gender and reproduction issues. But it seems clear to me that Sanders, in distinction to Clinton, might very well deliver in terms of the fight against corporate control of our republic. And for this, and for the key importance it has in relation to safeguarding our planet, I will give him my support.

I am on the left, in the way that Pope Francis, the leader of my Church, is on the left. I see the West’s real challenges in the growing economic inequality we face, the reckless militarism, the ongoing corporate-sponsored degradation of our environment. Hillary has nothing to offer on any of these fronts, regardless of what she might claim on the campaign trail. In any instance where some initiative conflicts with what corporate boards want, it is clear which policy she will support. Look only at her cheerleading for the TPP and one sees what she is. She and her corporate masters do not deserve the support of any committed person on the left. If Sanders does not win the nomination, I will either write in his name on the ballot or vote for a third party candidate. I’ve pledged to do so, and will keep my pledge.

Unless Democratic candidates fight for our collapsing middle and working class, unless they fight for actual democracy, they deserve to lose. The 2016 election is an opportunity to send a pointed and nastily barbed message to the Democratic establishment. We Americans are not requesting that our elected officials finally start working for us; we are demanding it. Politicians who think they get a pass just because they shine rainbow lights on the White House do not deserve the support of the left.

And yes, even if the GOP nominates Trump, even if they nominate Kim Jong-un, I will stick to my pledge. That, after all, is the meaning of pledge. Hillary Clinton will not get this American's vote.

Eric Mader