This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Hondo

  • More Evidence of Clintoon “Pay-for-Play”? Sure Looks Like It.

    I’ve written before about the Clintoon Foundation’s “interesting” financial dealings.  In fact, I’ve observed – on more than one occasion – that appearances indicate there could well be a “pay for play” component to the Clintoon Foundation’s dealings while Clintoon was SECSTATE.

    Well the news today to me seems, as Alice said in Wonderland might have put it, “Curioser and curioser”.

    While Clintoon was SECSTATE, it turns out her chief-of-staff Cheryl Mills was in reasonably frequent contact with top executives at the Clintoon Foundaton.  “Reasonably frequent” here translates to 148 phone messages for Mills from senior Clintoon Foundation executives over a 2 –year period (2010-2012).  State Department phone logs show that no other private individual or concern came anywhere close in terms of the number of contacts with Mills over this period.

    Further, regarding Mills there’s also this:

    Last week, the State Department acknowledged that in June 2012, Mills spent two days traveling to New York to interview job applicants at the foundation. The State Department said Mills “volunteered” to do so, but neither the department nor a spokesman for the Clinton presidential campaign, nor Mills’s attorney, would say whether Mills used annual leave or unpaid days to perform that work – or whether it was done on the taxpayers’ time.

    If that was done while Mills was “on the clock” as a Federal employee, that means it was done on taxpayer’s nickle.  If so, yeah – IMO that’s a serious problem on multiple levels.  Ditto if taxpayers funded Mills’ travel.

    Moreover, some additional and previously unreleased email involving Clintoon confidante and protégé Huma Abedin has also come to light.  What it contains is similarly quite disturbing.

    Specifically, the public interest group Judicial Watch obtained a number of Abedin’s emails recently.  Collectively, these emails show a pattern of high-dollar donors to the Clintoon Foundation receiving expedited access to the SECSTATE.  Abedin appears to have been instrumental in coordinating that expedited access.

    . . . the messages show Clinton aide Huma Abedin “provided influential Clinton Foundation donors special, expedited access to the secretary of state.” The documents include exchanges not previously turned over to the State Department.

    You can view the 725 pages of Abedin email recently released by Judicial Watch here if you like.

    IMO, that’s disturbing as hell.  It appears to bolster the theory that Clintoon was engaging in “quid quo pro” trading of official influence (as SECSTATE) for contributions to the Clintoon foundation.

    And that’s not all, either.  It appears a total of over 150 non-government officials representing private concerns met with Clintoon while she was SECSTATE.  The exact number appears to have been 154.

    So, how many of those private individuals have perchance “donated” to the Clintoon Foundation?  Glad you asked.

    Of those 154 private individuals, 85 – or over 55% of those individuals representing private concerns – also “dontated” to the Clintoon Foundation.  At least 40 of those individuals – or nearly 26% –“donated” in excess of $100k.  And 20 of them – or roughly 13% – “dontated” $1M or more.

    That makes the lower limit for those “dontations” somewhere north of $22M.  It’s estimated that the total “dontated” could be over $150M.

    One extreme case was that of the the Crown Prince of Bahrain, who had previously contributed $32M to the Clintoon Foundation for a “scholarship fund”.  That individual was given virtually immediate access to Clintoon in terms of getting a personal meeting with her after contacting Abedin.

    After seeing all of that, well, it’s kinda hard to avoid the conclusion that there’s a damn good chance that “pay for play” is indeed exactly what was going on.  Circumstantial?  Yeah, it is. But here, the circumstances seem persuasive as hell.

    Even so, Clintoon has her       weak-minded sycophants incapable of facing ugly reality      defenders.     Predictably, both Clintoon and her defenders say that occurrences such as these are “coincidental”.

    Yeah, right.  And Al Capone was just a savvy businessman in Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s, too.

    Clintoon and her cronies might want to remember one thing, though.  Capone didn’t go to jail for racketeering.

    He ended up in prison because investigators “followed the money”.

     

    (Edited to Add:  here’s an article from Yahoo News giving more details.  I don’t recommend you read it immediately after eating.)

     

    Author’s Note:  new or occasional readers may notice the spelling “Clintoon” and assume that is a typographical error.  It is not.  That is intentional.

    In behavior, both famous Clintoons are IMO exemplars of the stereotypical corrupt politician – and are such compelling exemplars that they appear to be near-cartoonish representations of same.  (However, though each is IMO thoroughly corrupted they do appear to be corrupted in different ways.)  Thus, referring to them as “Clintoons” simply seems apropos.

  • More Clintoon “Private” Email Surfaces

    Remember those roughly 30,000 work-related emails on Clintoon’s unsecured private email server?  You know, the ones that were turned over to State for review by Clintoon’s lawyers in 2014?   The batch of emails turned over by Clintoon’s lawyers was supposed to consist of “all of them” – right?

    Well, it turns out that 2014 bunch wasn’t exactly “all of them”.  Rather, it turns out that that first batch of 30,000 was only about 2/3 of the total.

    State Department lawyers confirmed recently that the FBI has uncovered another nearly 15,000 emails sent by or to Clintoon at that “private” address while she was SECSTATE.  This new batch of emails wasn’t previously disclosed.  And they haven’t yet been reviewed.

    State is currently “prioritizing” the appraisal of this new batch of email to see what can be released to the public.

    This story at The Hill has more details.  It’s worth a read.

    Sheesh.  If you or I had pulled this stunt, we’d be in jail awaiting trial.  And we’d have been there for months already.

  • Clintoon: “Colin Told Me to Do It.” Powell: “Um, No I Didn’t.”

    Readers by now have probably heard about Clintoon’s claim – in a soon-to-be-published book – that former SECSTATE Colin Powell recommended to her that she use private email for everything except classified communications.

    Well, it seems that there’s a bit of a difference of opinion on that point.

    In the book, Clintoon apparently claims Powell and she had a conversation concerning the matter in which he told her to use private email for unclassified matters.  However, Powell flatly states that he doesn’t recall any such conversation.

    And while Powell did in fact send Clintoon a memo describing how he used email while SECSTATE, that memo was apparently sent to Clintoon over a year after she took office.  She started using private email shortly after taking office as SECSTATE.

    Hmm.  A Clintoon making statements that on investigation turn out not to be true.

    Figures.  Simply more Clintoon “business as usual”.

  • Clintoon Associates . . . and Hypocrisy

    The NY Post today is reporting that Ms. Huma Abedin – protégé of a certain lady not exactly known for espousing conservative political tenets – was formerly assistant editor for a highly conservative Islamic magazine.  That magazine is the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs.

    Vogue it’s not.  It’s been described as a “radical Muslim journal” and as “hate filled”.

    Predictably, Abedin today denies having an “active role” with the magazine.

    Yeah, right.  And noted cigar aficionado BJ Willie didn’t inhale, either.

    In fact, Abedin appears to have been listed as co-editor for that magazine for a period of roughly 12 years – from 1996 to 2008.  Her mother apparently is still the magazine’s editor-in-chief today.

    Dunno about you, but I believe 2008 is the year Ms. Abedin’s mentor first tried to con the US public into electing her POTUS.   But like that recent      ransom payment to spring hostages      return of seized assets to Iran, I’m sure the timing there was “mere coincidence”.

    The magazine Abedin co-edited from 1996 to 2008 promoted anti-feminist views, and endorsed strict interpretations of Islamic law.   In 1996 articles, it took issues with the current Clintoon presidential candidate’s positions on women’s empowerment and rights, saying that they were against Islam.

    Indeed, while assistant editor of the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Abedin herself publishedarticles in another Saudi publication in 1996.  Those articles – like the magazine for which she was assistant editor – took issue with Clintoon’s positions on women’s rights.  Indeed, some have called Abedin’s 1996 articles a point-by-point rebuttal of her now-mentor’s positions concerning women’s rights.

    Oh, and did I mention that she wrote those articles in 1996 – while she was also working for Clintoon as a (presumably) non-beret-wearing White House Intern?  Well, if I didn’t make that clear before . . . I guess I just did.

    Hypocrisy?  You betcha.

    But then again, we should expect nothing else.  We are talking about the Clintoons and those close to them.  We should know full well what to expect from that crowd by now:  hypocrisy, bullsh!t, and a shove to the left.

    Oh, and if you’re wondering why this matters . . . wanna guess who’s the “smart money” bet as likely White House Chief of Staff if Clintoon is elected POTUS?

  • 9/11, Two Photographs, and Chance

    On 9/11, an Australian photographer was working in NYC.  He’d been covering the US Open.

    He was planning on taking the day off, but he was called after the first plane hit the World Trade Center.  He was arriving in the area when the 2nd tower collapsed.

    He spent the rest of the day documenting the attack and its aftermath.  Many of his photos that day were of NYFD personnel involved in rescue operations.

    Near the end of the day, something caught his eye.  It was a dusty photograph of a mother and her toddler daughter amid the rubble.

    Leaving it in place, he blew the dust from that photo.  He then took a photo of the photo amid the rubble.

    He then took the photo with him and turned it in to authorities.  Its precise location today is not known.  It may be among the items catalogued that day, or it may have been lost.

    His photo of that photo ran in the New York Post the following day.  It ran on page 12.  He didn’t know the people in the photo.

    The photographer was affected by 9/11.  He returned from Australia for the 10th Anniversary.

    He met many of the firefighters he’d photographed during that 10th Anniversary visit.  He got to know some of them, and their stories.

    But he still didn’t know anything about the lady and toddler in the photo from the rubble.

    He kept looking.

    . . .

    It turns out that the lady and her husband were out-of-town on vacation on 9/11.  She indeed worked in the North Tower, and had lost friends.  But they were safe – as was their daughter.

    They heard about the photo in the Post.  It caused many of their friends to attempt to contact them.

    They too wondered about the photographer who’d taken the Post photo.  But due to the confusion surround the events of 9/11, they were unable to determine who he was.

    They later moved away from NYC.  But a copy of that Post photo stayed with them.  It served to remind them that life is precious, and that the “small stuff” is exactly that – small, and not really important.

    Each year, the lady used the Post photo on Facebook.  It was her way of giving thanks for life, as well as a tribute to lost friends.

    And she still wanted to know who’d taken that photo of her photo.

    . . .

    The photographer continued to search.  And eventually, fate was kind.  He found the picture the lady had posted – his picture.

    He also found out she’d been looking for him, and that she and her family wanted to meet him.

    The photographer traveled from Australia to Florida, where the lady and her family now live.  They met in person earlier this year.

    Afterwards, the photographer and the lady’s family traveled to NYC, and visited the 9/11 memorial.

    . . .

    Fox News has a story today giving more details than my bare-bones account above.  IMO, it’s certainly worth a read.

    If you read it, though, you might want to have a tissue handy.  There’s a chance you might need one.

  • Yeah, It Was Ransom. The State Department Now Admits It.

    Something curious happened last week, on Thursday.

    Asked by a reporter if the U.S. wouldn’t have paid the money until the prisoners were released, State Department spokesman John Kirby replied, “That’s correct.”

    Hmm.  From Merriam-Webster

    ransom:  a consideration paid or demanded for the release of someone or something from captivity

    Seems pretty clear to me that the US State Department has now contradicted the POTUS’s (and its own) prior public statements regarding the Iran payment.  Above, State now plainly admits that the USA paid ransom to Iran for the return of some of our citizens.  Previously, the “party line” was that the timing was “a coincidence”.

    “Coincidence?”  Yeah, right.  The payment was ransom, plain and simple.  Anyone with half a functional brain could see that.

    The media’s reaction to this admission has also been interesting.  While in a rare display of responsible journalism the New York Times apparently gave this story the Page 1 treatment it deserves, some       pernicious “Progressive” propaganda purveyors      mainstream media outlets did not.  The Washington Post and USA Today each chose to bury the story deep inside their respective Friday editions.

    But the fact that at least some of the media would try to bury this isn’t surprising, either.  Most of the US media has been de facto cheerleaders for the political left for virtually my entire life.

    The only surprising parts of this disgusting incident are that this “most transparent administration in history” actually admitted the sordid truth here – and that at least some of the media didn’t try to hide that fact.

  • Bissonnette Loses Royalties, Speaking Fees from “No Easy Day”

    As longtime TAH readers know, Matt Bissonnette wrote a book about the takedown of bin Laden called No Easy Day under the pseudonym “Mark Owen”.  It’s been the subject of numerous articles here at TAH (see here and here and here) and has been mentioned in several other related articles.

    Bissonnette ended up in a bit of legal trouble over the book.  While he wasn’t criminally prosecuted, the government took him to court to enforce his nondisclosure agreement.  One of the terms of that nondisclosure agreement is that all profits from any work revealing classified information that is published without appropriate prior review are to be turned over to the government.

    The court suit has now been settled.  Bissonnette will forfeit to the US government all royalties and profits from his book; that amount is already believed to be over $6.6 million.  Within 30 days he will also pony up $100k in speaking fees he received for using slides (apparently based on the same information) that were also not submitted for review prior to public use.

    In short, he’ll do exactly what he agreed he would do when he signed his SF312, Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement.

    IMO, Bissonnette and his original lawyers were idiots – Bissonnette for not complying originally, and his lawyers for letting this drag on for years.  The SF312 is quite clear and unambiguous regarding both post-employment disclosures and the procedures for publishing works that may contain classified information – and it has been for decades.

    Signing a SF312 is required for access to classified information.  Bissonnette signed a SF312 – and probably multiple copies – during his Navy career.

    But I guess the prospect for a 7-figure payday sometimes brings out “teh stoopid” in people.

    And please, spare me the “the government is singling him out to screw him for political reasons” or “he didn’t know” garbage – because that’s bullsh!t.  Bissonnette signed on the dotted line; if he was too stupid to read the document and understand it, that’s on him.

    Besides:  Bissonnette has written a follow-up book entitled No Hero: the Evolution of a Navy SEAL, also under the pseudonym “Mark Owen”.  He submitted that book for the appropriate pre-publication review.  It was approved by DoD with minor redactions.

    Count your blessings, Mattie-boi.  For what you did, it’s entirely possible you could be in jail today vice simply out considerable coin.

  • More Accounted For From World War II and Korea

    DPAA has identified and accounted for the following formerly-missing US military personnel.

    From World War II

    • Seaman 1st Class Murry R. Cargile, U.S. Navy, assigned to the crew of the USS Oklahoma, was lost on 7 December 1941 at Pearl Harbor.  He was accounted for on 12 August 2016.

    • Fireman 1st Class Jim H. Johnston, U.S. Navy, assigned to the crew of the USS Oklahoma, was lost on 7 December 1941 at Pearl Harbor.  He was accounted for on 12 August 2016.

    From Korea

    • PVT Virgil B. Adkins, B Company, 1st Battalion, 65th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, US Army, was lost on 17 July 1953 in North Korea.  He was accounted for on 10 August 2016.

    Welcome back, elder brothers-in-arms.  Our apologies that your return took so long.

    Rest in peace.  You’re home now.

    . . .

    Over 73,000 US personnel remain unaccounted for from World War II; over 7,800 US personnel remain unaccounted for from the Korean War; and over 1,600 remain unaccounted for in Southeast Asia (SEA).  Comparison of DNA from recovered remains against DNA from some (but not all) blood relatives can assist in making a positive ID for unidentified remains that have already been recovered, or which may be recovered in the future.

    On their web site’s “Contact Us” page, DPAA now has FAQs.  The answer to one of those FAQs describes who can and cannot submit DNA samples useful in identifying recovered remains.  The chart giving the answer can be viewed here.  The text associated with the chart is short and can be viewed in DPAA’s FAQs.

    If your family lost someone in one of these conflicts and you qualify to submit a DNA sample, please arrange to submit one.  By doing that you just might help identify the remains of a US service member who’s been repatriated but not yet been identified – as well as a relative of yours, however distant.  Or you may help to identify remains to be recovered in the future.

    Everybody deserves a proper burial.  That’s especially true for those who gave their all while serving this nation.