Category Archives: Clinton
Coal Country Candidate
Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in the West Virginia primary 51.4% to 35.8%.
Before the primary an unemployed coal miner confronted Hillary for acknowledging that her policies would put a lot of coal miners out of work. She claimed that her remarks were taken out of context. Here are her remarks in context from Politifact:
So for example, I’m the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right?
And we’re going to make it clear that we don’t want to forget those people. Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories.
Now we’ve got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels, but I don’t want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we relied on.
Aside from EPA mandates, coal is being displaced by a cheaper and cleaner fuel – natural gas produced by fracking.
Guccifer
An unemployed Romanian taxi driver named Marcel Lehel Lazar goes by the handle Guccifer. In his spare time he hacks the email of famous people. In 2013 he read email sent by Sidney Blumenthal to Hillary’s home brew account. For his troubles Lazar has been arrested and extradited to the U.S.
In a recent prison interview he told Catherine Herridge, of Fox News, that he hacked Hillary’s server. “It was easy,” said Guccifer.
The thinking is if a Romanian cab driver can do it, maybe the Chinese, Russians, and others can do it too.
So, while “Lucifer in the Flesh” is out of the presidential race, Guccifer is still a factor.
Update 07/07/16:
FBI Director Comey testified to Congress today that Guccifer admitted to the FBI that he lied about hacking Hillary’s server.
Libya
President Obama told Chris Wallace in a Fox News Interview that Libya was his greatest mistake. He blames a lack of planning for the day after Gaddafi was killed. Or, as Hillary put it, “We came, we saw, he died.”
Vanity Fair points out that Hillary considers Libya to be one of her “chief accomplishments.”
Democratic Superdelegates
Bernie is racking up the wins but the party establishment is safe, thanks to Democratic Superdelegates. Unlike mere mortal delegates they aren’t beholden to any candidate.
Mark Plotkin in The Hill calls the Superdelegate arrangement a House of Lords category that makes the Democratic Party undemocratic.
The Republicans, on the other hand, are all House of Commons – no Superdelegates. The only way for their establishment to stop an outsider like Trump is to back Ted Cruz, an outsider they hate a little less.
Obama Lectures Reporters
President Obama lectures reporters on reporting.
Jack Shafer reported in Politico on the president’s address at a journalism awards ceremony.
The occasion was the Toner Prize for Political Reporting awarded to Alley Mac Gillis by Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.
