Posted on 10/21/2015 5:30:47 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It’s an ancient story: An innocent idealist sets out to change the world and in the process becomes what he hates most. “He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster,” Friedrich Nietzsche advised.
That’s probably the best spin one can put on Sidney Blumenthal, the longtime Hillary Rodham Clinton aide and confidant. But it would be just that — spin — given that Blumenthal was never an idealist, never mind an innocent. He has remained the same man he was in 1976, when he co-edited Government by Gunplay: Assassination Conspiracy Theories from Dallas to Today. Other contributors to the paranoid collection included renowned JFK assassination conspiracy theorist Carl Oglesby and former CIA officer Philip Agee, who was giving information to the KGB and Cuban intelligence at the time.
The journalist turned Clinton White House courtier is in the news because he shows up in Clinton’s e-mails — a lot. (Roughly a third of the last e-mail dump contains e-mail between them.) When first asked about her correspondence with Blumenthal, Clinton insisted he was merely “an old friend” who occasionally sent “unsolicited” e-mail.
That was a lie. It turns out that then–Secretary of State Clinton was in near-constant contact with Blumenthal, urging the head of her “secret spy network” (ProPublica’s term) to supply her with information and political advice, mostly about Libya. “Thanks for keeping this stuff coming!” was how she put it in one typical reply.
Nor was he simply acting as an “old friend” either. He was on the payroll of the Clinton Foundation to the tune of $10,000 a month. Media Matters, a self-described media watchdog that serves as Clinton’s shadow communications operation, paid him $200,000 a year.
Representative Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), the chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, alleges Blumenthal had significant business interests in toppling the Libyan regime because he was working with a firm seeking contracts with what he hoped would be the new Libyan government. Gowdy claims that Blumenthal disclosed the name of an undercover operative in an e-mail Clinton forwarded over her unsecured server.
Clinton had no choice but to run Blumenthal off the books because the Obama administration banned him. Then–White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel — who in the 1990s nicknamed Blumenthal “G.K.” for “grassy knoll” — knew to keep the conspiracy-minded aide at arm’s length. It probably never occurred to him that Clinton would go to such lengths to keep her factotum on the team.
But what does it say about Clinton that she just can’t do without her pet? Part of the answer is that Blumenthal is a legendary sycophant. But the means of his sycophancy are more relevant. He serves as Clinton’s enabler: a rumor-mongering Wormtongue whispering confirmation of the vast right-wing conspiracy that the Nixonian Clinton sees everywhere. Even as a journalist, Blumenthal played this role. He urged the Clinton administration to craft a dossier on the conspiracy driving negative coverage of the Clintons, including in such right-wing rags as the Washington Post.
When Blumenthal finally landed a job in the Clinton White House, the most frequently told joke in Washington was about how he could finally collect his back pay. One of his chief tasks in the White House was to lie to reporters about the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the independent counsel’s investigation. He infamously claimed that a grand jury had interrogated him about private conversations with journalists. He made it up.
In a chapter in “Government by Gunplay” (defending the Black Panthers), Blumenthal writes of J. Edgar Hoover: “He had a Manichean vision, convinced that all evil emanated from a single source and that all of the devil’s work was of a single pattern.” Elsewhere in the book, he writes, “The guardians of the established order see themselves as the only fit rulers.”
This is precisely how Blumenthal sees the world: a contest between enlightened rulers and evil ones, where power requires making up your own rules. “If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself,” observed Hermann Hesse. “What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.”
And that’s what makes him Clinton’s indispensable man.
— Jonah Goldberg is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior editor of National Review.
Why Benghazi Still Makes a Difference
Hillary Clinton may not see the point, but her Thursday testimony may tell us much about her ability to lead.
By John Bolton
Oct. 20, 2015 6:12 p.m. ET
351 COMMENTS
Only in Perry Mason stories does the real culprit break down in open court. After Hillary Clinton’s now-immortal Capitol Hill outburst about investigations into the deadly 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya—“What difference, at this point, does it make?”—the former secretary of state and Democratic candidate for president is unlikely to offer any such spontaneity when she testifies Thursday before the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
Nonetheless, the committee’s work is utterly serious, its preparations extensive (and extensively stonewalled by Mrs. Clinton’s team) and its mission vital to our fight against still-metastasizing Islamist terrorism. Much is at stake. The hearing’s focus must be on the key policy and leadership implications of the mistakes made before, during and after the murders of Amb. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans on Sept. 11 three years ago.
Morning Editorial Report
Before the attack, there was ample warning that the U.S. consulate in Benghazi wasn’t secure, with terrorist threats in the area multiplying. Even the International Red Cross had pulled out of Benghazi. After a string of requests from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli for more security, in mid-August came a joint Embassy-CIA recommendation to move the State Department’s people into the CIA’s Benghazi compound. The State Department in Washington was invariably unresponsive, even though, as Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey later testified, the rising terrorist threat in Libya was well known.
Given her self-proclaimed central role in deposing dictator Moammar Gadhafi, why was Mrs. Clinton so detached from the deteriorating situation in Libya? She has so far dodged the issue, pawning off such “technical” matters on her subordinates. Working in the State Department in 1990 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, I saw firsthand how Secretary of State James Baker dived into every detail of safeguarding U.S. diplomats stranded in Kuwait City. If earlier secretaries of state have been perfectly prepared to get their fingernails dirty in operational details when those under their responsibility were threatened, why wasn’t Mrs. Clinton?
http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-benghazi-still-makes-a-difference-1445379145
If earlier secretaries of state have been perfectly prepared to get their fingernails dirty in operational details when those under their responsibility were threatened, why wasn’t Mrs. Clinton?
Basically, all of her experience was domestic. Out of all the people Obama could have chosen for that job, Hillary was the least qualified.
Gadhafi was in the way of their plans in order to make the Arab Spring a reality, so he was removed.
Hillary needed to get her future taken care of, you know, getting huge donors for her election to be the first female president of the United States, so her mind was not on her job. In some quarters that would be considered a major irregularity.
So, when the 3 am call came through both Odunghole and the Hildabeast were AWOL.
In a non-bizzaro world they both would be considered traitors to our nation and would receive the ultimate penalty.
More than likely Ruby Ridge was orchestrated to help get Clinton elected.
The FBI and other govt agencies needed Clinton to get elected to cover up what was in the 15,000 FBI files on police abuse being reviewed by the US Attorneys.
When Reno was nominated as AG she said the first thing she would do if confirmed was release the content of those 15,000 FBI files.
Instead of releasing the files she fired all the US Attorneys except 1 IIRC.
Since everyone was busy paying attention to what was happening at Waco nobody paid attention to the 2nd trial of the LA police and R King, the 15,000 FBI files and Reno’s firing of the US Attorneys.
After Waco V Foster, who’s job was to vet Clinton appointees and surround Clinton with people that needed the US Attorneys fired to cover up what was in those files, started spilling his guts and that is when he was found belly up.
Those two Republicans who told the media that the Benghazi hearings were designed to lower Hillary’s polling should be called out and stripped of their Congressional perks.
They did significant damage to the Republicans and to the hearings, because they basically provided fuel to Hillary’s claim of a Vast Right Wing conspiring against her again.
Hillary gets to play the victim, again. And that feeds into the Dem allegations of a War on Women.
One wonders whether those 2 Republicans are getting paid or promises from the Hillary campaign.
When Ruby Ridge happened I was also under surveillance because of the information I had provided to the US Attorneys for their review of the 15,000 complaints filed against police with the FBI which Bush had ordered.
At the time I didn’t know which fed agency it was but I assumed it was FBI.
I was then contacted by one of the Waco investigators, he was with the ATF. He tried to make it appear as if it was a chance meeting but typical of ATF he screwed up his story so bad it couldn’t possibly be a chance meeting.
Among other things he knew my last name and I never told him what it was.
I saw a picture of one of the ATF agents that was at Waco, (IIRC she was identified in the picture as Barbara Maxwell. Dumb as a bag of hammers.) and recognized her as someone that had been following me around back in the late 1980s.
I can’t say for certain but I’m pretty sure Ruby Ridge and Waco were both planned as part of the cover up of corruption in the FBI, ATF, and other govt law enforcement agencies including the CIA and their drug running operation into Mena, Arkansas.
I haven’t trusted the govt for a long long time.
Somewhere around 1988 I came to the conclusion the dem party is nothing more then the political wing of organized crime.
“the system” is only as good as ... the people are in it.
You got that right.
I was living in Corpus Christi, TX and had a run in with a cop that was stoned out of his gourd.
He spilled his guts about a dope running operation he was involved in with other corrupt cops, CIA and every other fed agency you could think of.
I thought the guy was just nuts. He wasn’t.
The dope running operation that was flying dope into Mena, Arkansas with the Iran Contra flights also had a ground operation running dope and using Iran Contra as cover.
I had at least 3 attempts against my life possibly 4. Even had an assistant district attorney threatened my life. Let me know it was legal for cops to kill me.
I’m still not sure about the last one, #4, but it still gives me the butt puckers.
I had a flat one morning about 4:30 while headed to a job site. It was on the right front side.
When I took the tire to the tire shop and the manager said it was a bullet hole. Even showed me the ricochet off inside of the rim and where the bullet went out the bottom of the tire.
If that was in fact a bullet hole they could have put it through me as easy as they put it into my tire.
He wasn’t.
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