For interminable months, we will be receiving vague messages concerning Hillary Rodham Clinton. I leave that saga to the media, but will highlight some of the more egregious lapses by the former First Lady, Senator and so on. Why? Because she’s running for president. Why? That is a mystery. Did it look like so much fun to her, when her husband held that office? So far, she has offered no reason for running, and no indication that she is qualified. We also don’t know what she plans to do in the unlikely event she ascends to the highest office in the land.

I believe the most important quality in a president is trust, that she means what says and says what she means, to paraphrase Glenn Beck. Mrs Clinton is the polar opposite. She is highly secretive and duplicitous, from what we’ve learned over the years.

We know that she claims to care about everyday Americans, whomever they might be. We also know that she lives like royalty, totally isolated from everyday Americans, much less their concerns. With that in mind, this page will be updated as her campaign of deception and triangulation proceeds.

1. Save on Secret Service expenses because her family already get that costly protection
2. Won’t have to learn a new name, particularly one with tricky spelling, like Trump,
    since she is a celebrity
3. Unlike other rich celebrities, no one wants to be her;
    even Kim Kardashian has her beat in that regard
4. She won’t be dazzled by all the presidential perks, private jet, etc.,
    accepting them as her due

Can you think of other advantages of another Clinton presidency? If so, email me and maybe I’ll include your suggestion. There must be more. I’m sure her crew are taxing their brains for a couple more.

Ms Clinton says she wants to take money out of politics, even if it requires a Constitutional amendment, like that’s a snap solution. In order to gain power, she is planning to spend $2.5 billion, far more than anyone has ever spent before. I’ll allow hacks to point out the hypocrisy. The first two times Obama ran for president, he promised “campaign reform,” while raising record amounts for his campaigns. Bill CLinton continued fundraising through his entire second term. It is likely his wife would do the same. After all, Chelsea is old enough to president.

The truth is that money is in politics because of all the power the government have seized. Rather than introduce an amendment, the federal establishment need to hew to the existing Constitution. If they had not illegally shoehorned themselves into every aspect of our lives, they would not exercise the total control that incentivizes groups and individuals to buy favors.

As a so-called private citizen, Hillary Clinton charged as much as $300,000 for a forty-minute speech. She is not a great speaker, she’s not even a good speaker, so the overinflated payments must be for something else. And that cash is in addition to incredible perks exceeding what most talented orators would demand, like accommodations in the presidential suite, special food, water, transportation, and so on. Then she has the chutzpah to say she is for everyday people.

Mr Clinton is a pretty good speaker, entertaining, so long as you don’t think about what he is slinging. After his wife became Secretary of State, Mr Clinton’s fees rose to about $500,000 a speech. In his defense, he says he has to spend two hours a day on research. That can be taxing, unless you donate most of the money to your own charity. [To be fair, as much as a whopping 20% of the billions raised by the Foundation supports charitable work. The rest covers overhead, such as staff, travel and dinners.]

He assured an interviewer that nothing untoward resulted from huge fees and enormous contributions to their family fund, that they did nothing “knowingly innappropriate,” adding that Hillary assured Bill that no one tried to influence her by contributing to the Clinton foundation. “I don’t think that I did anything that was against the interest of the United States.” And you can take that to the bank, since we know he would not lie about his missteps.

As Carly Fiorina put it, “Bill Clinton is saying what Hillary Clinton has said on many occasions: just trust us, just trust us. And unfortunately trust is earned through transparency, and I think they have not been particularly transparent on a whole host of things.”

“It’s better not to argue with women, but Ms Clinton has never been too graceful in her statements. Still, we always met afterwards and had cordial conversations at various international events. I think even in this case we could reach an agreement. When people push boundaries too far, it’s not because they are strong but because they are weak. But maybe weakness is not the worst quality for a woman.”
— Vladimir Putin, June 2014

Greatest Secretary of State —
even better than Thomas Jefferson?

How about most secretive SOS?

©2015 Gary Tutin

updated 4 May 2015

Why vote for Clinton?

“In place of a rationale, there’s an assumption that her prominence, her résumé, and the likelihood of her becoming the first woman president would make her a uniquely appealing candidate. They haven’t…”
— Fred Barnes, Weekly Std

Anyone who has worked for a company or a government in the past 20 or so years knows how e-mail works. Your employer assigns you an e-mail address that identifies you and your employer. For example: gtslade@jerkoffco.com. Simple. So when you get an e-mail purporting to be from the IRS shakedown artists, first thing you do is check to make sure it is from IRS.gov, not jerkoffco.com. If you are computer savvy, you check the header to verify it is not an alias.

That is how it goes, simple and convenient. Since your employer owns your e-mails, the organisation stores them on their server.

When it was discovered years after she left the State Department that Hillary Clinton had e-mail on her personal server, she was asked about it.

Her answer was that it would have been difficult to have a separate personal and professional e-mail service, and that she wanted all her e-mail accessible on one phone because two phones would be too complicated.

Soon, we learned that she had at least two portable devices that could handle e-mail although, as most everyone knows, you can access multiple e-mail accounts on a single hand-held device.

Having one account for business and personal correspondence combined was silly at best. But it ignores the question of why she parked her single e-mail account, and those of her inner circle, on a non-government server located in her home.

If she was seeking simplicity, why go through the trouble of setting up a server?

It is conceivable that a server could be explained if the State Department server was erratic, or insecure. The trouble with that rationale is that Clinton set up the server in anticipation of becoming Secretary of State. She never requested a government e-mail account, as every honest person working in a government office does, leaving more questions. Who paid for the server and for its maintenance? Who administered it? Servers require backing up and other supervision. We have learned that she had a State Department employee install the private server in her home. We do not know if he was paid by the government or by the Secretary, or anything else, because he refuses to testify before Congress, the reaction of individuals who know they were not involved in any chicanery and have nothing to hide.

It is clear and indisputable that Mrs Clinton set up the server to conduct clandestine correspondence without oversight, when she eschewed the State Department's services. When there were Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from the public and Congressional subpoenas, she did not produce the documents, acting as if they were her personal property which, legally, they were not. As a lawyer, so she knows that. If she had good intentions, she would have granted the State Department access to her server, or simply given them the server. She did not.

Clearly, she was concealing information because she erased thousands of e-mails, claiming they were personal, before sending State hard copies of what remained, according to Clinton. Electronic copies could have been searched more easily and, of course, they were not hers to keep.

Only the most fanatical partisan could say that Clinton was operating legitimately. It was not a mistake, as she has said. It was deliberate.

How she would operate on the odd chance that she is elected president? Will her administration be even less transparent than the current most opaque presidency in history? It's a conundrum easily resolved by Hillary Clinton pulling out of the race now, instead of waiting to lose the nomination, or being indicted. Whichever comes first.

— 28 January 2016