Interesting Legal Approach

So two of the families of the people murdered in Benghazi are suing Hillary Clinton. I can't hold that against them. They're grieving, and they feel like they need someone to blame, I get that. But, considering that Secretary Clinton has been exonerated by about two thousand Republican investigations that were designed specifically to find a way to blame her, I don't see how they're going to find a lawyer willing to take this loser of a case.


Enter Larry Klayman.

Wait, Larry Klayman hasn't been disbarred yet?

Not even after this?

Right-wing lawyer Larry Klayman announced in WorldNetDaily over the weekend that he was filing a lawsuit against President Obama, Black Lives Matter, Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton "for endangering not just my life, as a white law enforcement person of Jewish origin, but also for all Americans, white, black, yellow or brown, no matter what their race or religion.

 Shhh. . . no one tell him! He thinks he's a "law enforcement person!"

Or this?

Klayman Discusses Citizens Grand Jury to Seek Indictment of Justices Roberts and Kagan

Anyway, what novel legal approach is America's worst lawyer going to take, seeing as how even her greatest enemies have not been able to find a way to blame her for the tragic deaths?

Having used a secret private email server that we now know was used to communicate with Ambassador Christopher Stevens with confidential and classified government information, and which we now know was likely hacked by hostile adversaries such as Iran, Russia, China and North Korea aligning with terrorist groups, it is clear that Hillary Clinton allegedly negligently and recklessly gave up the classified location of the plaintiffs’ sons, resulting in a deadly terrorist attack that took their lives.

Who else could have come up with such an innovative legal approach?

If Hillary Clinton hadn't used a private e-mail server, which we can just assume was hacked by everyone from Kim Jong Un to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the terrorists would never have known that there were US State Department employees in the, um, US Embassy. . . wait. I think I see a flaw in your case, Larry.

"Gosh," the terrorists would have said, "I'd sure like to kill some American infidels, but where could we find any?"
"How about that building with the American flag out front? The one with US Marines guarding it?"
"No, I'm pretty sure that's a Chinese restaurant. I got no beef with the Chinese."

CNN is a trainwreck, Don Lemon is the conductor.

How is CNN still on the air? ( I know, it isn't "the air" anymore, I'm old.)
And how do they keep trotting out Don Lemon?

 

The other day, Clint Eastwood said something incredibly stupid  and, let's say "racially insensitive" at least. 

Now most people just rolled their eyes and said maybe this guy:

doesn't really kn ow what the fuck he's saying anymore.

Or maybe this guy:

might just be kind of a dick.

But Don Lemon heard this and said "an old white guy said something offensive? Convene a panel!"

And of course, it wouldn't be a CNN panel unless they found someone from Hollywood to defend Eastwood's comments. Enter Graham Beckel!

Yeah, I didn't know who he was either. But according to IMDb, he's been in a lot of stuff.

Actor (114 credits)

Known For

L.A. Confidential Dick Stensland

(1997)

Brokeback Mountain L.D. Newsome

(2005)

Leaving Las Vegas L.A. Bartender

(1995)

Another World Officer Jenkins (1984)

(1964)

but I still don't really know who he is.  But apparently his brother Bob works for CNN (seriously) so they were able to land him as an expert commentator.

Here is what he had to say about Eastwood's recent word-poop.

GRAHAM BECKEL, ACTOR: Yes. Clint is 86 years old, lives in Hollywood and kissing ass is a, you know, it's the currency of the realm, everybody in Hollywood kisses ass except people with a tremendous amount of integrity, he being one, Warren Beatty, Tommy Lee Jones, Morgan Freeman, people from the left and the right, some people have integrity, Clint Eastwood is one of them.
And I love the popping you guys are doing with this corn, overrating this some of kind of racist thing about it. I think that's a -- it's dim witted and slam goes...
(CROSSTALK)

What? Okay, for one thing, after hearing Eastwood's comments, I got to figure that Warren Beatty, Tommy Lee Jones and Morgan Freeman are probably not too thrilled about being lumped in with him as "men of integrity."

Hell, considering I dated my granddaughter, I really can't complain!

But "I love the popping you guys are doing with this corn?" That may be the weirdest thing ever said on CNN, and they've had Orly Taitz on! 

And this hot mess.

LEMON: How is -- how is it -- how is it overrating -- how is it being overrated and racist. Explain to me. 

Who else but Don Lemon could make this shit even more confusing by trying to get a clarification?

 

BECKEL: What -- didn't somebody just saying that what Clint was saying was racist? Did I not hear that?

LEMON: But I want you to explain how it's being racist by pointing that out.

Look, I'm no professional journalist like Don Lemon, but I think maybe it should be pointed out that Beckel did not actually say that it was racist to call Eastwood's comments racist. So you could forgive Beckel for being a bit confused at this point. Except that he seemed to be pretty confused when he showed up.

BECKEL: OK, well, to the extent that all that is political correctness, Clint Eastwood kind of transcends political correctness as far as I'm concerned.

You know, Studs Terkel had a great line about "political correctness." It went something like "we had political correctness when I was a kid, we just didn't call it that. We called it common decency." So, every time I hear someone use the phrase "political correctness," I substitute the term "common decency." So, to me, Graham Beckel is saying that Clint Eastwood for some reason, (integrity?) transcends common decency. Like because he's a Hollywood icon or whatever he doesn't need to be a decent human being.

And, you know, I was working with him in San Quentin Prison, we were doing a movie and we had heavy guards around, there's a lot of guards and right before our lunch they all took off and Clint led the crew and the cast through the yard.
There were 800 prisoners in that yard. And they were black, they were white, they were Hispanic, Asian.  Whatever God has ever made the visage of man was in that yard. It was utterly silent. That man walked into the middle of that crowd and everybody suddenly burst into applause and they were cheering him. Why? Because he's the masculine ideal. He's the guy who tells it like it is.

Okay, first of all, stop trying to use big words and high falutin' language. " Whatever God has ever made the visage of man" is a ridiculous way to say "every ethnicity, or every type of person, or whatever the fuck you were trying to say.

And you seriously ask why did the prisoners applaud him? Um, because he's a movie star? And they enjoyed his movies? And also this never happened? At least not the way you describe it. No guards are going to desert a bunch of actors in the middle of the yard in San Quentin prison. Not the prison guards or any private security guards the studio might have hired. They'd never work again if they did that. And sure, Clint Eastwood would probably have been fine because a lot of the prisoners were probably fans, but someone in that cast or crew would have had a pretty bad day. (I can't imagine it would have gone well for the "best boy.")

LEMON: OK. So, Graham, but what does that have to do with this question...
(CROSSTALK)
BECKEL: I don't -- I don't get what the racist question is.
LEMON: OK. Maybe the...
BECKEL: The post-colonial victim bullshit. I don't get it. Sorry.

Well thank God we took the time and expense to get you into the studio for this discussion!

Coming up next, we ask our sports network for his World series predictions and he responds "what the hell is this baseball shit?  The throwing, and the running, I don't get it."

And for some reason, they just keep going.

LEMON: Yes. So, I'm trying to figure out though, Graham, what is being, you know, overly masculine, or being masculine, what does that have to do with racism? And what's the connection? I don't get it.
BECKEL: You know, I read that entire article on the subject of race; it didn't particularly enter in as a feature or fabric of it. And, Charles [Blow], how many -- how many black soldiers spent the winter with George Washington at Valley Forge?

Jeezus Christ, Lemon, he doesn't know! Stop asking him questions! He has no idea how to formulate an answer. He's just tossing out random thoughts.

BECKEL: OK. This whole subject of race and around the election, that's one issue. Clint Eastwood in the context of this article is quite something else. That was a feature of it that was a part of it certainly. But that wasn't the substance of it.

Hey, you can't call Eastwood a racist if only SOME of the things he said were racist!

If he can get through an entire paragraph without using the N-word, he's not a racist!

 You know, why is it -- you know, I always judge people on would they have spent the winter with Washington, anybody who is running for president.
And nobody lately has had that quality particularly. Why is it that they had to ask Trump about women at the top and not find out what the body of his knowledge was?
How many black soldiers spent the winter with Washington at Valley Forge? It's a perfectly legitimate question. The answer is 700.

Um, no one asked you to judge any presidential candidate. No one is asking about Trump's misogyny. And we know what Trump's body of knowledge is. Real estate, the bankruptcy laws, and how hot his daughter is.

Let's give the last word to Lemon's other guest, political commentator Charles Blow.

LEMON: Blow?

 BLOW: No, you don't ask me to answer that. I don't know what this man is talking about.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

I am so sick of this

Every four years, we see these bullshit columnists and pundits urging the Democratic nominee to please move more to the "center," to reach out to conservatives, to not be "divisive." I'm sick of it. And I sure don't need to hear it from a ridiculous little schmuck like Ross DoucheHat.

Liberalism’s Big Bet

Ross Douthat JULY 30, 2016

THE key pivot point in the Democratic convention arrived during President Obama’s speech on Wednesday, when he told the throng of Democrats that Donald Trump’s baleful convention rhetoric “wasn’t particularly Republican — and it sure wasn’t conservative.”

. . . As a gesture, it was immensely powerful.. . .

But it was also just a gesture. Yes, the convention’s showmanship was strikingly unifying, bipartisan, moderate — but Hillary Clinton’s domestic agenda is not. She’s running as a liberal, full stop, with a platform well to the left of where her party stood five or 10 or 20 years ago.

Well, considering that 20 years ago the DLC "New Democrats" took over and decided that they'd rather grovel for Wall Street money than try to appeal to unions, environmental groups and civil rights activists, it's really not all that hard to be to the left of the Democratic position of the last few election cycles. Also, it's a bit hard to picture a "liberal, full stop" supporting trade deals like the TPP,  promoting fracking, or boasting about her friendship with Henry Fucking Kissinger, all of which Hillary Clinton has done and is doing. Her domestic agenda may be "liberal" compared to some; she's pro-choice, she's willing to raise the minimum wage, make college more affordable, but she's also from the wing of the party that gave us welfare reform, bank de-regulation and "super-predators," so really, she seems like a moderate at best.

She’s happy to make right-leaning voters feel a little better about fleeing Trump, but she isn’t offering them substantive concessions, or seeking a grand centrist coalition. Instead she’s telling them: It’s me or Trump, and you know you can’t put the nuclear codes in his undersize hands, so my offer is … nothing.

Yeah, that's right. You get nothing. You lose. You get nothing.

Why should you get anything? You don't deserve anything. Who told you guys to nominate this uniquely, spectacularly bad candidate? She's going to mop up the floor with your guy, and she's not even good at this. Some of your voters aren't comfortable voting for a megalomaniacal orangutan with anger management issues? Boo fucking hoo! How is that her problem? Why should she move any further to the right to accommodate  the half-dozen or so sane Republicans left in this country? They don't want to vote for Trump? Good. Stay home. Stay home and think about what you could have done to prevent this walking temper tantrum from becoming your nominee. You let this happen, why do you think your fuckup entitles you to concessions from our nominee?

Imagine, for instance, that you’re one of the many churchgoing voters — Catholic, evangelical and Mormon — repelled by Trump’s vulgarian style, his bigotry and misogyny

Okay. I guess if that's who I am, I would say to myself, "I should have done a better job in the primaries. Instead of the vulgar bigotry and misogyny of Donald Trump, i could've pushed for the creepy, greasy bigotry and misogyny of Ted Cruz. Or the subtle, understated bigotry and misogyny of John Kasich. I guess I have no one but myself to blame."

Oh, wait. Silly me! If I'm a conservative religious Republican, I wouldn't accept any blame. I would, instead, demand that the Democratic nominee change her whole approach to woo my vote, since as we all know, the conservative white Christian voter is the most important. My vote should really count at least double that of a gay atheist or something.

But on social issues, Clinton and her party aren’t even offering the fig leaf of her husband’s “safe, legal and rare” formulation. They’re for abortion rights without exception

Oh, you mean they are in favor of letting a procedure which the Supreme Court has declared to be perfectly legal remain perfectly legal? What a bunch of radicals!

Or again, imagine that you’re one of the many Americans conflicted about immigration policy — you view immigrants favorably, you find Trump’s rhetoric toxic, but you also favor limits on migration, and you want to make sure that the law is respected and enforced.

So I'm one of, what, like 6 people with this oddly specific viewpoint on immigration? Okay. This one's a no-brainer. I vote for the candidate who doesn't want to deport all the Muslims, doesn't want to round up however many millions of Mexican people are in this country, and doesn't think that she can make a foreign country pay for a structure they don't want by sheer force of will.
Oh, and also isn't endorsed by David Duke.

You would be happy to vote for the Hillary Clinton of the early 2000s, who talked a lot about border security and workplace enforcement.

Well, maybe.  But not if I was a church-going Republican. Because if I was a Republican, I would have spent the last 25 years or so being told that Hillary Clinton is a communist, man-hating minion of Satan. And no rhetorical accommodation she might have made at the convention is going to convince me otherwise.

But that Clinton is long gone. Her party is evolving toward the position that illegal aliens, save criminals and terrorists, should never be deported once they’ve reached our soil, and Clinton herself is committed to a unilateral amnesty even more expansive than the one that President Obama attempted.

See, you just did it. You made a ridiculous claim about centrist Democrats being off-the-charts leftists, then complained that they won't move to the "center" to meet you halfway. When, in fact, on this issue, the Democratic Party has been a bit right of center for a while now. President Obama's very moderate, middling DREAM policy is nothing like a unilateral amnesty. No one is saying that no illegal immigrants should be deported, in fact the Obama administration has deported more immigrants than any other in our history, and there's no indication that Hillary would do any differently.

Yet you're sitting there straight-faced claiming that moderates can't possibly find common ground with HRC's far-out borderless "c'mon in, everyone" policy which just does not exist.

Or finally, imagine that you’re a fiscal conservative who appreciated Bill Clinton’s balanced budgets.

Appreciated them so much that you impeached him over a personal affair?
And then turned those balanced budgets into the biggest deficits in history the moment one of your own took the reins?

But you listened to Hillary’s acceptance speech and you heard the voice of Bernie Sanders — expand Social Security, free college, new infrastructure spending, plus a call for a living wage and a jab at “unfair” trade deals

You know, maybe Democrats are just sick of doing your job for you. You are the guys who always harp about the debt and deficit, yet whenever a Republican gets in the Oval Office, suddenly, debts matter to you as much as they did to me when I got my first credit card. None of you assholes has ever balanced a budget or even reduced the deficit. Bill Clinton had to clean up the mess left behind by Reagan and Bush I. Barack Obama has been lowering the insne deficits left behind by Bush II. Maybe if you guys care so goddamm much about balanced budgets, you should do it yourselves. Quit expecting Democrats to clean up your messes.

As Vox’s Andrew Prokop pointed out, there wasn’t even a nod to entitlement reform or the deficit, no mention of the costs of excessive regulation or the virtues of free trade, no real hint of how this largess might be paid for.

Okay, let's take this point by point.
 There was no mention of "entitlement reform" because Democrats don't really like the idea of fucking over the elderly, impoverished, and disabled and calling it "reform."  They don't dislike the idea as much as they should, obviously, but trying to peel a few votes away from the GOP by appealing to the ghoulish, sadistic grandma-starvers out there probably isn't a winning strategy.

Secondly, Fuck your deficit. And fuck you for lumping "entitlements" in with the deficit. You know goddamm well that Social security and medicare don't add a cent to the deficit. You want to lower the deficit? Give up your tax cuts. Chop the hell out of the bloated defense budget. Don't you come after our Social Security pretending you're being "fiscally responsible."

Third, I know you righties like to toss around this bullshit about "excessive regulation" or "job-killing regulations," and I think it's time for us to demand that you name one. Name one. Name one regulation that is doing damage to our economy. Name one regulation that is "killing jobs." And then explain how these regulations are causing more harm than the de-regualtion of the banks did. Name a regulation that has cost thousands of people their homes. Name a regulation that has resulted in billions of taxpayer dollars going to bail out private companies. For that matter, name a regulation that caused more harm than the Savings and Loan collapse, or Enron or Valu-Jet.

And who the hell still believes in the "virtues of free trade?"  You'd have to have been asleep since NAFTA.

Now it’s true that, if elected, Hillary probably couldn’t implement all of these proposals, and conflicted voters who vote for her and for Republicans down-ballot can feel that they’re voting for compromise rather than pure liberalism.

Also, anyone who is remotely familiar with Hillary Clinton knows that "pure liberalism"  is not a phrase anyone would associate with her.

But strategically there are risks. The Clinton campaign needs to expand on the Obama coalition somewhere to make up for its likely losses among working-class white men.

Yeah, no she doesn't.
She has already expanded her percentage of the non-racist vote. And the non-misogynist vote. And the I-don't-want-a-president-who-gets-into-Twitter-wars-with-Rosie-O'Donnell vote. And the I-don't-want-a-President-whose-only-experience-is-being-a-businessman-who-has-had-multiple-bankruptcies vote. I think she's going to be fine. But thanks for your fake concern.

But it’s assuming that it can afford to be more left-wing than Obama while doing so

Um, my neighbor's cat is more left-wing than Obama.

Also, way too extreme in his anti-dog policies.

Gun Nuts win again. Normal people can suck it, apparently.

President Obama better get it in gear. He only has about 6 months left to seize everyone's guns and send gun nuts to re-education camps, and he is really falling behind.

News Politics

Campus carry takes effect today

Texas college campuses are now going to be required to allow students to carry concealed firearms on campus. Because no one could be trusted more to handle weapons responsibly than college students.

 

Quick! Someone get this man a 9 mil!

 I've been in a college classroom where the professor had to eject a student for being disruptive. I can't imagine how that would have ended if that student had been packing. 

No, YER kicked out of MY class!

(Pro tip: Google image search for "Drunk Fratboys" gets you a lot of gay porn!)

Oh, and the law goes into effect on August 1, the anniversary of the infamous Texas University Tower shooting.

Remember me. . . with more guns! On campus. . . in Texas. . .

But, according to Texas State representative Allen Fletcher, that's really no big thing.

Allen Fletcher is sick of people bringing up the fact that campus carry becomes law on the 50th anniversary of the UT Tower shooting. 
This wasn't some conspiracy to rub a new gun law in survivors' faces, he says. Aug. 1 is the effective date of many laws, and the implementation of campus carry was even delayed to that day to give schools more time to work on their plans.
"I'm like, 'Are you kidding me?'

You can always tell a true statesman by the use of phrases like "I'm like, 'Are you kidding me?'"

"I'm like, 'Are you kidding me?' We've been working on this for years, and for the implementation to fall on that day — that had never even crossed somebody's mind," Fletcher says. "I'm not a young man, but it's a long, long time since that happened, and I haven't thought about it for a long time."

"I haven't thought about that since the last time I needed a little help jerking off!" he did not add.

 

I'm guessing this lady has thought about it more recently.

For professors worried about the new law, says Fletcher, they're just going to have to deal with it. UT-Austin's campus carry plans allow professors to ban guns in their offices, a deal Fletcher said will not stand.
"A private citizen will say, 'You can't tell me I can't have my gun in your office.' And then that student will win, because the law is very clear," he said.

The law is very clear in its prioritizing the hurt feelings of inadequate gun-toters over the safety concerns of professors who just would like to do their jobs without having to constantly wonder "is this the one?  Is this the guy whose going to kill me because he doesn't like his grade?"

But a handful of UT professors have sued for even more control over gun-free zones, in the hopes that a court will say educators can ban them from classrooms, too. The worries, Fletcher said, are "much ado about nothing."

"Hell, I'm like sixty years old, I won't be setting foot on any college campuses, I'm not worried at all!"

If anyone is capable of blowing this, it's Hillary!

You know, it should be a no-brainer. Any Democrat with a pulse should be able to mop up the floor with Donald Trump. But if there is any politician capable of blowing this, it's Hillary Clinton.

At some point in our recent history, the two parties absorbed opposite lessons. The Republicans learned to play to their base. keep 'em all wound up and scared, whether it's the fear of dirty hippies with their sex and drugs,

I don't know what that stuff is, but I bet it's smokable! 

or fear of Commies in our midst,

or this terrifying scene,

you keep your base scared to death and tell them that you're coming to save them if only they vote those darn liberals out of the way.

Democrats somehow learned the opposite lesson. Ignore your base. Hell, actively distance yourself from your base. Deny them thrice before the cock crows twice and "triangulate" by staking out a position just a bit to the left of wherever the GOP is at the moment and try to capture that elusive "moderate voter."

Look, a soccer mom!

And no one has internalized this lesson more than Hillary Clinton. At a time when she needs to try to appease Bernie supporters and show the progressive wing of the party that she shares at least some of their values and concerns, she extends to them, not an open hand, but a middle finger in the form of Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Fairly or not (fairly, I think), Wasserman Schultz is seen as public enemy #1 by a lot of Berners, who are furious that she (allegedly) colluded with HRC to defeat Senator Sanders. Schultz became such a distraction that she was forced to step down as head of the DNC. And was IMMEDIATELY hired by Hillary Rodham Clinton. She might as well have said to Bernie's supporters "oh, you hate Debbie? You see her as the personification of corruption? Then I'm with her! Fuck all y'all!"

She has clearly staked out the position that she neither needs nor wants the votes of real progressives because she's confident that enough Republican voters will desert their party because of Trump and vote for her that she can win without us.

Then, as if to drive home the point, she invites Democrat/ Republican/whatever he is now  weasel Mike Bloomberg to speak on her behalf at the convention, trying to lure more centrist conservatives to her campaign.

Is this going to work? It might. Only because Donald Trump is the most loathsome and frightening nominee of a major party we've ever seen. And it god damn well better work, because she god damn well needs to win this thing.

Which means that we need to vote for her. Because she is the lesser of two evils. And no one wants to vote for the lesser of two evils, but when your only legitimate choices are greater evil and lesser evil, you have a moral obligation to choose the lesser. And just a common sense interest in having the lesser evil.

If you are given the choice of a punch in the stomach or a knife in the heart, you choose the punch in the stomach. And no, you're not going to enjoy the punch in the stomach, and no, you didn't deserve a punch in the stomach, but the alternative was so much worse that you'd be a fool not to choose the stomach punch.

Thank you, sir may I have another?

Okay, here's a better analogy. Suppose you are convicted of a crime which you did not commit. And the judge offers you a choice of prison time or community service. And you say "well, I don't deserve any punishment, having been falsely convicted, and I won't dignify this miscarriage of  justice by choosing either undeserved penalty. I'll just let you decide, Judge!" You'd have to be an idiot to do that, right?

Tell us again about how you stood up to that lousy judge! Then we're both gonna fuck you.

So, yes, you do have to vote for Hillary. At least if you live in a swing state. And not because she "deserves" your vote or should be "rewarded" for various misdeeds by receiving your vote. It's not about her. It's about you. And me. It's about us and whether or not wee have to spend the next four years being governed by a childish buffoon with fascist leanings. We're going to have to put up with Hillary for at least four years to avoid that fate. And if we have any sense,  we'll have four years of grassroots organizing to find a primary challenger for 2020. But for now, we have to get behind Hillary, because she's pursuing a really dumb strategy. And if there's one politician capable of losing to Trump, it's Hillary Rodham Clinton.