Archive for the ‘Secretary of State’ Tag
It isn’t a case of the Democrats now going off soul searching, it case of total revamp from top to bottom after Trump’s win last Tuesday. The Amazing Democrats’ advice very early on to the Clinton Campaign (and some of those comments were posted on our social media platforms as far back as the late summer of 2015) went unheard unlike when we worked for the Obama/Biden campaign in 2012. It is time DNC to fire all your overpaid pollsters (who got it so wrong), consultants and the like. The DNC should of known in their hearts of hearts that after Bernie Sanders won twenty-two states with so little money against Hillary Clinton, their candidate of choice would be in serious trouble if the Republicans got a candidate who could storm the mainstream and social media which Trump did and of course got a bit of luck along the way with that first letter released by the FBI Director that certainly damaged Hillary in early voting and gave a huge boast for Trump with his base. Yes, a lot of questions will be asked as to how the FBI were allowed to influence an election so openly. But this was far from the only reason Hillary lost even if the DNC die hards believe it to be so. The DNC and Democrats have lost their way and have been now for a long time. Their obsession only seems to be with fundraising not the core principles of what the party was founded on, Trump was able to tap into that huge hole in the DNC. It was a party that once cared for the low income, the homeless, our veterans, the poor people of America and not the massive billions of dollars in fundraising which was totally wasted trying to take Trump down. Just think today how many homeless people that billion of dollars plus would do to help house the homeless crisis in our major cities which should have been a top issue for Hillary.
Hillary campaign interviewed myself and members of The Amazing Democrats, for the record we call ourselves The Amazing Democrats as we not die hard Democrats, we wouldn’t have followed Hillary in to the fires of hell if she was wrong and we wouldn’t be silent either even if it meant we were fired from the campaign, that’s the way worked in the Obama/Biden 2012 reelection campaign and we were amazed how we survived not to be fired (nearly maybe once or twice when we really overstepped our mark and criticized some of the President’s polices publicly). The interviewing process went back as far as January 2016 to join her campaign. We were subjected to rounds and rounds of interviews, back ground checks, etc. Months would go by and we heard nothing and then it would start all over again. It was by late August this Editor got interviewed for the sixth time, more back ground checks and then was offered four important positions in four different swing states and one of this offers came directly from the DNC. All this was paid employment and not volunteer work. That last weekend in August for me was were I suffered so much turmoil as I had to give them a decision by the following Monday. It meant dropping everything in my life and getting on a plane to Pennsylvania. What was most troubling in my mind was I could sense there was panic setting in for the Democrats and Hillary’s campaign. I didn’t sleep that weekend. I went back to the old formula that the Obama campaign thought me and even though I didn’t have access to data like we did when worked for Obama, never the less, I ran the data all weekend long. It is a long and laborious process that you can see today that both the pollsters and media don’t do, why? Maybe they just are too lazy to do it, who knows? You have to run every state’s county’s data county by county, you have then figure in the data available from both the candidates’ primary wins or loses, a lot of mathematics but in the end you get a somewhat overview, be it very rough. Also you have to take into account that I had been tracking the swing states every week since both primaries ended last year. Not good for Hillary and her team I could see, in fact the Wednesday before the election I was gloomy, I could predict Trump was going to win Ohio by three percent (he won by five percent so I was only out by two percent) and as you know, no Presidential candidate can take their place in The White House if they don’t win Ohio. With all this, it was the hardiest email I ever sent, declining the positions to work on the Hillary Clinton campaign.
As we move into the Trump Presidency, it’s going to be a very dark lonely path for the Democrats. Yes, there is the mid-terms in 2018, but if the DNC works as it has for the last twenty years, they are a very slow climb back up on Capitol Hill as remember this Presidential election in 2016 had the lowest turn out of voters in years, which helped Trump but destroyed Hillary’s chances of winning, nearly 50% of the electorate didn’t bother to vote and historically mid-term voting has a very low voter turn-out. Also if Trump makes any small success of his first term and as everything Trump touches turns to gold, whether you like his manner and process or not and as it very hard to unseat a sitting President, as we all know, Trump going for a second term, then the DNC and Democrats could be looking at the wildness for next eight years at least, that’s 2024, a very depressing thought I know, but maybe a fact unless the DNC make radically chances and that starts today, not six months before the 2018 mid-terms.
In the 2006 mid-terms under George W. Bush, the Republicans got wiped out in the House and the Senate. All the media said at that time that Republican Party need to reinvent itself and stop been the “party of no”. Did they? Of course not, in fact under Obama as President and because of their hatred of him, they became the “party of no, no, no” on every bill he sent to the House and Senate. Now look where they are ten years later. The power of Washington again with the Democrats hanging onto their coattails and the sad thing is, Trump gets to pick the next Supreme Court justice. If he gets two terms, who knows, with three more justices ready for retirement in the next few years, he might even hit the golden jackpot of nominating four Supreme Court justices, a very scary thought. The Democrats however can’t do as the Republicans did in 2006, which was nothing to change their image and beliefs but the Democrats aren’t so lucky. If the DNC go back to business as usual, it will be a very dark long road for the Democrats back to the shining lights of The White House. It is simply the base. The Republican base and the Democrat base is so so much different and as Trump said decades ago when he was a registered Democrat, pro-choice and donated a lot of money to Bill Clinton’s Presidential campaigns: “If I was to run as President, I would run as a Republican as their voters as so dumb and easy to fool, I would lie and lie to them until I got numbers”. That’s all he had to do for this Presidential campaign and he is the winner today not Hillary Clinton.
Which brings what fundamentally went south very early on in the Hillary Clinton campaign:
1. NEVER EVER underestimate your opponent.
2. If he/she gets down in the dirt, you go down there with them. Hillary taking the high road was her downfall as political correctness (PC) means nothing anymore in the world of social media as we saw with Trump, the King of Twitter and Obama/Biden in 2008 as the King of Facebook. PC has gone way too far in the US and the rest of the world and Trump, no matter what you think, turned PC on it’s head in this presidential election and as he said on 60 Minutes last night, “it was nasty, very nasty but I am the one sitting here today talking to you and not them”. In fact 2020 and 2024 will be so so much nastier. Rumors were that Trump using his own money, paid pockets of supporters all over America to flood the internet with lies about Hillary and Bill Clinton and the secret? They could never be traced back to him or his campaign. Why didn’t the Hillary Clinton campaign do the same with the rumors about Trump’s ties to the Mafia? Why was this never floated all over the internet? PC I guess but he won and Clinton lost. The new trend now with Presidential campaigns as Trump has lowered the bar, is to win 2020 or 2024 the candidates from both parties to win, will have to get down in the mud and get dirty. Sad? Of course but no cares about the loser, they only care about the winner.
3. Dump the negative ads. One billion dollars was such a waste of money by the Clinton campaign and Trump barely spent a faction of that. We kept telling the Obama/Biden campaign and the DNC in 2012, negative ads don’t work anymore and only turn all the voters off. Pity they didn’t listen.
The Amazing Democrats are not all about criticizing without offering the DNC suggestions for the road forward:
1. Fire all your overpaid pollsters, consultants, lobbyists, etc..
2. Allow the progressive members of the party to take over. (I do not mean the loony left), members who understand the issues of the day to day worries of the lower income Americans (who sadly are too many), the homeless crisis in our cities all over America, our veterans living on our streets.
3. Get back to what a community organizer really is. I used get so annoy with new volunteers who joined our team who tried to tell the person forcefully on the other side of the phone why they should vote for Obama or donate to Obama’s campaign and the DNC. A community organizer’s job is to listen and listen well and then send what they hear up the line and hope they are listening otherwise you get a result like Tuesday’s Presidential elections.
4. As the advice to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, get off the negative ads obsession (turns all voters off).
5. And please with every email you sent, stop looking for donations all the time. It makes us feel you don’t care about anything but money and donations which we know to be true.
6. Find the soul of the Democrat Party again of FDR and John F. Kennedy.
7. And finally, listen. Never stop listening to those on the ground as we are the ones who can make the difference from the Democrats winning or losing an election.
Here is to the 2018 mid-terms, see you then and to 2020 Presidential election. Keep the faith and a sense of humor as The Amazing Democrats do and God Bless America,
Editor, The Amazing Democrats.
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“No matter what side you’re on or not on, your opinion and vote does really matter”. – Be involved and be heard.
From what Secretary of State John Kerry said yesterday and today the Secretary of Defense is visiting this very region in the Baltic Sea where this happened with a Russian military jet and see (by the photograph) how close this Russian Sukhoi Su-24 aircraft flew to our USS Donald Cook on Monday of this week in the Baltic Sea. Next time it has been made very clear to Moscow that the Russian pilots, if they fly so close again to a US navy ship, won’t be getting coffee and donuts but something a hell of lot stronger. Let’s hope Putin and his crones in Moscow listen? Otherwise this could get out of hand like with the Cuban Missile Crisis in the early 1960’s or back to we where with in 1980’s when Russia was the Soviet Union back then. Let’s hope we never go back to those dark old Cold War days but Moscow, this shit has to stop.
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“No matter what side you’re on or not on, your opinion and vote does really matter”. – Be involved and be heard.
Democrats and “Hillary’s People” need to seriously wake up to the most dangerous man for America on the planet and could even have a chance of being our next President of the United States. Donald Trump is not only America’s number one clown around the world, he is also a very dangerous man. The Amazing Democrats have remained silent these past few weeks as we are very disappointed with the direction of the Hillary Clinton campaign. We mentioned time and time it needs a massive shake up campaign staff wise and still (even with the new television commercials for Hillary Clinton’s campaign this week), we see the same old, same old boring save approach messages.
This has never worked against the GOP and we certainly wouldn’t have had a hope in hell re-electing Obama against Romney in 2012 if we had taken that approach. We took our gloves off and played in the dirt with the GOP and we did what we set out to do, we won. The fact the Clintons are friendly with Trump (or Jeb Bush for that matter) makes no odds. Trump threw the first punch when recently (in the South) he brought up Bill’s sex life. So Hillary time to get serious. Shake up your campaign staff from top to bottom and don’t be such a stick in the mud by not hiring some of Obama old campaigners as remember we won for Obama in 2012. There were no rules and there simply aren’t when you are up against the GOP, they don’t play fair and Trump certainly won’t. You and your campaign are giving Trump too much of a head start and you will regret this big time should he be nominated as the GOP candidate. Didn’t you make that same mistake with an unknown Senator called Obama in 2008?
The secret with Trump’s weakness is his business deals in the past. Dig and dig hard. In the 1980’s in New York, who did he do business with then? Follow the money. Follow his treatment of people who got in his way. For example take the poor people of Scotland and what he did to the locals there who were just trying to make a living. Trump is not just a man about greed and stupidity, he is a very dangerous man for America and the world. Wake up Ms. Clinton please and start the fight today and shake up your campaign staff and campaign. Don’t repeat the mistakes of your 2008 campaign – Editor, The Amazing Democrats.
by the Editor of The Amazing Democrats
The DNC are wrong to fall in line with the main stream media and begun an email campaign last week to its followers to defend Hillary’s private email server when she was the Secretary of State. You have to wonder who is hired as their Communications Director that is allowed to make such decisions.
Once again the DNC are digging themselves into a huge hole that they won’t be able to dig themselves out closer to the election and will end up hurting Hillary in the long term and not helping her win in 2016.
The Democrats and the DNC need to learn and learn fast to fight fire with fire. It is no secret that Sheldon Aldeson, the Koch brothers, Karl Rove and Dark Vader (Dick Cheney) himself were investigating Hillary over a year ago and the private server issue was brought to their attention as the investigators had to justified the large fees they were charging. Is the American public really that stupid that they can’t see through all this GOP bull?
The DNC could of easily months ago (before this story broke) quietly remind our main stream media that Dick Cheney when he was VP destroyed the VP’s residence’s guest list (which was illegal). It baffles me why the DNC can’t reach back to a few years ago when the last Republican administration in the U.S. was in fact George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Why is there is so much inaction of the DNC when this story was bubbling up for months before it even hit the main stream media outlets? Come on DNC wake up please or you will hand the 2016 Presidency to the Republicans and this will be twice in your history you kicked Hillary in the butt. I am amazed she is so forgiving of you when the Super Delegates (another crazy DNC rule) elected Obama as the candidate in 2008 even though Hillary was by far the more popular candidate for us all.
It is not a case of that is the past and move on. It simply is PC (Political Correctness) that has taken over in America. The words now used daily to quieten logically discussion has being set by the CEOs of Corporate America and the rest of us including the media follow like sheep. The word they invented was “inappropriate” and now that word is used for everything and everyday millions of times across the country to control the voices of dissent. Never do you heard them say that their own salaries or bonus are “inappropriate” or that Donald Trump is “inappropriate” in how he speaks about people’s race. No, because he is wealthy, he is not a no-body because he has that healthy bank account. Do you see where this is going DNC? It is like Shakespeare said in Hamlet: “was and is, to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure”. What we will be known as in this decade in the twenty-first century is a “bunch of hypocrites”. It can’t be helped with our obsession with PC and the word “inappropriate” that is mostly used to suppressive the voices of dissent while the very people imposing these rules are overpaid bloated useless CEOs that pour their company’s big bucks into the Super PACs RATs.
Hillary needs to take a leaf out of Obama’s 2008 campaign when he hired (somewhat) inexperienced people for all areas of his campaign. Hillary surrounding herself with all these “experts” from Bill’s past administration will be her downfall. Her communications department to date has proving useless with the email server story. What her people and the DNC are ignoring is that oiling this very wheel with the main stream media outlets are the Karl Roves, the Dick Cheneys, the Koch Brothers and Aldeson in Las Vegas and you fight fire with fire. What Hillary should do from September 2015 is hold a weekly hour long press conference every Friday morning and allow the reporters free rein with their questions and allow five minutes only (every week if need be) on the email server topic. She would even be advised to put her hands up and say “look I was wrong, it was stupid of me, and I did it for conveyance; that was all. No biggie here. Did I get a memo from the President to say he was writing me up for this? No.” The American public love that. You did something wrong, you were caught, say you’re sorry and by the summer of 2016 we will all be sick of Hillary’s emails and her private email server and please when she becomes President may she never send one email!
Listening to the learned attorneys on U.S. Federal law, when she was Secretary of State it was a very gray area then concerning using a private server for Federal government business and it is very unlikely the FBI could even find a law to proceed to move into a criminal investigation. Sadly for Hillary and the campaign the Roves, Cheneys, Kochs and Aldesons are feeding the main stream media differently and most not worth their grain in salt just publish this misinformation. Sound familiar? We had it for eight years under the George W. Bush/Dick Cheney administration and Obama left them off scot free. It’s called the “President’s Club” and there is nothing we the voter can do about that.
But the DNC emailing all their supporters last week trying to explain Hillary’s emails and her private email server when she was Secretary of State will do Hillary a huge disservice in the long term and plays right into the hands of Rove, Cheney, the Koch bothers and Aldeson. Please DNC fight fire with fire and let’s get Hillary elected in 2016.
by Anne Gearan (The Washington Post)
KEENE, N.H. — Hillary Rodham Clinton struck a more partisan tone here Monday at the start of her second week as a presidential hopeful, warning Republicans against seeking to “undermine” Social Security and suggesting GOP candidates were fixated on her candidacy.
“It is, I think, worth noting that the Republicans seem to be talking only about me,” Clinton told reporters with a grin. “I don’t know what they’d talk about if I wasn’t in the race. But I am in the race, and hopefully we can get on to the issues.”
Returning to the state that has twice rescued her family’s political fortunes, Clinton seemed to exhale and relax a bit after her first, high-stakes campaign trip to Iowa last week. She hugged supporters, expertly bounced a baby and got in her dig at Republicans, who had focused on her as much as the rest of the GOP field during a weekend conference in the state.
Clinton did not address the substance of claims in a forthcoming book that she had helped foreign entities that donated to her family foundation while she was secretary of state.
“We’re back into the political season and, therefore we will be subjected to all kinds of distractions and attacks, and I’m ready for that,” she said following a tour of a small, family-owned plant that makes children’s furniture.
Clinton peppered her remarks with several policy goals for her emerging campaign, including an emphasis on the “quiet epidemic” of rural and small-town drug abuse and the need for better technical and trade education. She also predicted a political battle over Social Security, which she characterized as a necessity.
“There’s a lot of loose talk about Social Security,” Clinton said during an exchange with a worker in his 50s who told her he is worried about having enough money in retirement. “It’s not a luxury, it’s a necessity.
“Everybody who thinks we can privatize Social Security or undermine it in some way” is overlooking workers in a similar situation, she added. “What’s going to happen to people like you? It’s just wrong.”
The remarks were an obvious swipe at Republicans, including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who have signaled an interest in revisiting the issue.
Clinton did not offer specific policy plans on Social Security or other issues, however, and did not hint at whether she would seek to expand the program, as many in her party’s liberal wing have proposed.
“Let’s just take a deep breath here as a country and say, ‘Okay, we’re going to have a retirement issue, and people who’ve worked hard deserve to have enough security when they retire so they can have a good quality of life,” Clinton said. “I’m a hundred percent committed to that.”
Her two days in New Hampshire are meant to emphasize her economic agenda — very little of which has been fleshed out — and to showcase her efforts to support the middle and working classes. Calling businesses like Whitney Brothers, the company whose factory she visited, the “backbone” of the economy, she said too many larger corporations shortchange worker salaries.
The former senator, secretary of state and failed 2008 presidential candidate also spoke at length about vocational and technical education, calling it a mistake to have let shop classes and other affordable job-training programs atrophy. Clinton will visit a technical college in Concord on Tuesday.
She called substance abuse, particularly prescription drug abuse, a “perfect storm” and said treatment and insurance options for substance abuse and mental-health issues will be a “big part” of her campaign. She applauded mental health coverage guarantees “on paper” through the Affordable Care Act but suggested the system doesn’t go far enough.
When the discussion ended, Clinton warmly hugged and kissed former Keene mayor Patricia Russell, seated at the edge of the crowd in a wheelchair.
“Oh! How are you?” Clinton said, rushing to throw her arms around Russell.
The two first met in 1991, Russell said, when she escorted the wife of a little-known Arkansas governor on a tour of a local Head Start center. Bill Clinton’s better-than-expected finish in New Hampshire in 1992 made him the “comeback kid.”
Long relationships like that one are part of the bond between the Clintons and New Hampshire, which in 2008 became the symbol of her rebound after coming in third in Iowa. In an emotional appearance at a diner after her victory, she told New Hampshire voters they had helped her “find my voice.”
Later Monday, Clinton attended the first “house party” of the new campaign, in Claremont. The intimate meet-and-greet parties are staples of the campaign season in states with early caucuses or primaries.
Clinton struck a more conciliatory note in her remarks there.
“I am tired of the mean-
spiritedness in politics,” she said. “I am tired of people running to electtheir fellow citizens by being nasty to each other. That doesn’t solve a problem.”
By Anne Gearan (The Washington Post)
NEW YORK — Hillary Rodham Clinton made no mention of her forthcoming presidential campaign, or her recent e-mail controversy, as she accepted an award here Monday for her work helping to ease the decades-long sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland.
Wearing green in honor of St. Patrick’s Day on Tuesday, Clinton said she accepted the Irish America magazine lifetime achievement award “on behalf of all the remarkable women that I met and admired in Northern Ireland” as first lady.
Magazine editor Patricia Harty said Clinton was honored “for her role in helping to broker the Good Friday agreement” during the administration of her husband, Bill Clinton.
The event underscored Hillary Clinton’s long history with Northern Ireland, which figured prominently in her time as first lady in the 1990s and was part of her last overseas visit as secretary of state. She faced attacks during the 2008 campaign after saying she “helped bring peace to Northern Ireland,” a claim she avoided making Monday.
Amid the Guinness toasts at lunchtime and jokes about the number of potential U.S. ambassadors to Ireland in the crowd, Clinton took a serious tone as she recalled a trip to Belfast in 1995, when she stood with her husband to light Christmas lights. The episode was part of a process that would eventually lead to a peace accord in 1998.
“They simply would not take no for answer,” Clinton said of women who pushed male leaders to make and keep the Good Friday accord that Bill Clinton counts as a signature achievement of his presidency.
Hillary Clinton returned often to Northern Ireland, including her final overseas trip as secretary of state, in December 2012. She had planned further trips but canceled them after falling and hitting her head after returning from Dublin and Belfast.
Clinton played no direct role in fostering the 1998 peace deal but is credited with helping solidify support for the reconciliation effort. Her work bringing together women from both sides of the conflict served as a foundation for Clinton’s later work as secretary of state to include women in political and peace discussions.
Clinton did not go into the particulars of her involvement Monday, while praising the roles played by others.
Bill Clinton bucked domestic political opposition to extend an invitation, and a U.S. visa, to Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, Hillary Clinton said. Adams sat across from Clinton at the head table Monday in a glittering ballroom along Central Park West.
Bill Clinton received the same award in 2011. The publisher of Irish America, Niall O’Dowd, is a longtime Democratic donor and served on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 finance committee.
Clinton is expected to launch her second run for the White House next month. Her appearance Monday marked her first public remarks since a tense news conference last week in which she sought to put to rest questions about her use of a private e-mail system while serving as secretary of state.
Later Monday, Clinton took to Twitter to criticize the GOP-controlled Congress, including for not yet confirming Loretta Lynch to head the Justice Department.
“Congressional trifecta against women today: 1) Blocking great nominee, 1st African American woman AG, for longer than any AG in 30 years,” Clinton wrote. “. . . 2) Playing politics with trafficking victims . . . 3) Threatening women’s health & rights.”
by Ed O’Keefe (The Washington Post)
Jeb Bush used his private e-mail account as Florida governor to discuss security and military issues such as troop deployments to the Middle East and the protection of nuclear plants, according to a review of publicly released records.
The e-mails include two series of exchanges involving details of Florida National Guard troop deployments in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the review by The Washington Post found.
Aides to Bush said Saturday that none of the e-mails contained sensitive or classified information, and that many of the events mentioned in them were documented in press accounts, either contemporaneously or later. But security experts say private e-mail systems such as the one used by Bush are more vulnerable to hackers, and that details such as troop movements could be exploited by enemies.
An unknown number of the e-mails housed on Bush’s server were redacted or withheld from public release because they contained sensitive security issues, Bush representatives have said. Communications director Tim Miller said general policy was for Bush to discuss sensitive National Guard issues in person with only occasional briefings by e-mail that “wouldn’t contain information that should not be in the public domain. “This Democrat opposition research dump of a few innocuous e-mails that Gov. Bush voluntarily posted on a Web site only highlights how large the gap is between him and [former secretary of state] Clinton in the area of transparency,” Miller said in a statement.
Bush is actively considering a run for president and has sharply criticized likely Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton for her use of a private e-mail account when she served as secretary of state. He called it “baffling” that Clinton didn’t consider the potential security risks of discussing diplomatic and national security issues by using an e-mail account not tied to a government server.
As governor, Bush used his account, jeb@jeb.org, to conduct official, political and personal business, ranging from plans to woo new businesses to the state, judicial appointments and military matters, the e-mail records show. His e-mail server was housed at the governor’s office in Tallahassee during his two terms; he took it with him when he left office in 2007.
He later turned over about 280,000 e-mails for state archives under the requirements of Florida records laws, or about half of the total e-mails on the server.
In one e-mail sent four days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the top general for the Florida Air National Guard told Bush that “we are actively planning sequences in preparation for mobilization orders should they come.”
“They have not come at this time,” wrote Ronald O. Harrison, who was adjutant general of Florida. “We are pretty good at anticipating the type of forces potentially needed and are prepared to respond to the Presidents [sic] call.”
“Keep me informed of the mobilization,” Bush wrote in reply.
Bush officials noted that many of the deployment orders issued after 9/11 were included in news reports at the time, including some of those mentioned in the Bush e-mails.
In November 2001, Bush and an aide to then-Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan exchanged messages about the deployment of National Guard troops to a nuclear power plant in Crystal River, Fla. The aide wrote Bush that a state lawmaker had called to say she thought “it is imperative that the Crystal River nuclear facility have National Guard security.”
Bush wrote back: “Florida power does not want it. We are reducing or getting rid of guard protection in the other plants.”
Aides to Bush argue that the nuclear plant discussions were innocuous and mostly public anyway. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the International Atomic Energy Agency had warned that terrorists might try to attack nuclear power plants.
Bush dispatched Guard troops to protect two South Florida nuclear power plants but not the Crystal River facility. The plant’s operator, Florida Power Corp., declined the governor’s offer of security, according to local news reports at the time.
Aides also say Bush’s server was secure because it was kept at the governor’s office.
But Johannes Ullrich, a cybersecurity expert who is dean of research at the SANS Technology Institute, said private accounts in general are more susceptible to attacks than government e-mail addresses, particularly attacks in which a hacker establishes a look-alike account that allows them to impersonate as the account holder.
Encryption technology was also far less sophisticated in 2001, he said, which could have made Bush’s e-mails particularly insecure while traveling. If hackers gained access to Bush’s account, he said, there’s a chance they could break into the account of the National Guard commander or other officials who Bush exchanged e-mails with.
“The bigger issue here is, what else can an attacker do?” Ullrich said. “Now I may be able to penetrate a National Guard commander’s laptop by infecting it or by impersonating Jeb Bush’s account. . . . Now you may even be able to give the order to remove troops or change deployments.”
In recent days, Democrats — reeling from the criticism of Clinton’s e-mail practices — have stepped up their critique of Bush on the same topic, arguing that he used his personal e-mail to avoid public scrutiny of his actions as governor.
“The GOP presidential hopefuls’ attacks on this issue are completely disingenuous, and there are still a litany of questions Republicans need to answer, like what e-mails has Jeb Bush not turned over?” said Holly Shulman, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee.
Bush rebuffed such criticism during an event in New Hampshire on Friday. “I’m not surprised that the Clinton operatives would suggest this. It’s kind of standard operating procedure,” Bush told reporters, referring to Democratic charges that his e-mail situation was no different than Clinton’s.
He added later that he was “totally transparent. I have a BlackBerry as part of my official portrait, for crying out loud. There was nothing to hide.”
Under Florida law, Bush was required to hand over e-mails related to his time in office. Bush aides say there were about 550,000 e-mails on Bush’s server when he left office in 2007, although a portion of those came from before he began his tenure. About half that number were eventually turned over to state archives.
As noted Saturday by the New York Times, the archive process continued until last May, when attorneys for Bush delivered 25,000 additional messages. Aides have defended the pace of Bush’s compliance, saying that it took seven years because of his volume of correspondence.
In February, Bush launched a Web site, JebBushEmails.com, telling visitors that “they’re all here so you can read them and make up your own mind.”
Bush’s aides have strongly defended the process used to release his messages, noting that other potential GOP presidential candidates haven’t released any e-mails or are having e-mails released only as part of ongoing government investigations. The list includes former Texas govenor Rick Perry; Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal; Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker; and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie .
Perry and Jindal have used private e-mail for government business, according to the Associated Press. Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley (D) — who is also weighing a presidential bid — said last week that he used a private Gmail account as governor to communicate with aides and Cabinet officials.
When Bush published his e-mails in February, aides said many messages would be withheld or redacted to comply with state law barring the release of messages including Social Security numbers, confidential business issues or law enforcement and other security matters. Some of the published e-mails initially included Social Security numbers, forcing Bush’s team to quickly redact them — an early stumble for the governor’s fledgling presidential efforts.
A spokeswoman for the Florida secretary of state’s office did not return a request for comment Saturday to explain why some e-mails were released and others withheld, saying any answer would require a fuller legal interpretation that wouldn’t be available until next week.
Bush’s archives include a handful of other messages from leaders of Florida’s National Guard. There are copies of the “Florida National Guard Activity Report” from August 2000 and December 2000, with information about troop deployments to the Caribbean, South Korea and Kuwait; the activation of units; and details on training exercises and drug seizures.
In October 2000, Harrison e-mailed Bush to remind him that 170 Florida Air National Guardsmen from Jacksonville would be deploying to Saudi Arabia to enforce the southern Iraq No-Fly Zone. The message said they would “coincidentally travel over with a group of 90 from the Texas Air National Guard” — a unit that was under the command of Bush’s brother, George W. Bush, who was then Texas governor.
The next month, a lieutenant commander with one of the deployed units e-mailed Jeb Bush to thank him for sending a message of support, noting that “our unit has played a key role in missions directly related” to ongoing tensions between Iraq and Israel. The officer added that “you can assure your brother the F-15s from your state could take the F-16s from his state!”
Immediately after news broke March 2 about Clinton’s use of a private server, Bush faulted her for not releasing her e-mails from her time as secretary of state, writing on Twitter that “Transparency matters.” He later raised concerns about Clinton’s decision during an interview with Radio Iowa.
“For security purposes, you need to be behind a firewall that recognizes the world for what it is, and it’s a dangerous world, and security would mean that you couldn’t have a private server,” he said. “It’s a little baffling, to be honest with you, that didn’t come up in Secretary Clinton’s thought process.”
On Friday night, after a meeting with potential supporters, Bush was asked to respond to criticism that he, like Clinton, was allowed to self-select which e-mails should be turned over for archiving.
“I was way too busy to decide,” Bush said, before clarifying that his general counsel was among those involved in selecting which e-mails to turn over.
“It was a process that was based on the law itself, and we complied with the law and all during this time we’ve complied with the law, even in my post-governorship,” he said.
Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.
For the last two weeks we sat and watched and hoped in our heart of hearts that Hillary’s “people” would handle this whole personal email issue better and were we disappointed? That would be an understatement. We have to be fair, when Mitt Romney in the 2012 campaign make an error or we learned something about him and he went on the defensive, we jumped all over him. Now Hillary and her “people” are on the defensive we will speak our minds. What she did as Secretary of State using a personal email address for her work was not only arrogant but plain stupid and Hillary should have known better. You can be sure her personnel in the State Department would certainly have pointed this out to her from time to time, only to be ignored.
What we have said consistently is Hillary needs to drop her old team and re-invent her image when she announces (which now needs to be brought forward and if she doesn’t this email story will hurt her Presidential chances even more) that she is running for President in 2016. Going on the defensive is weak and un-American and voters simply shy away from a candidate who goes on the track. That’s how we beat Mitt Romney if you remember, in 2012. When he made major errors, he went on the defensive and we pounced. Jeb Bush and the Republicans are doing just that now with Hillary and Emailgate. When President Obama was a candidate in 2008 and Reverent Wright embarrassed him, he did the right thing and so did his “people” working on his campaign, he hit the controversy head on as he did with rumors with the purchase of his Chicago home and as he did with his birth certificate issue. He hit them all head on and moved on and so did the media and the American public. Hillary needs to learn this as it looks like we have a first 2016 Presidential campaign of only “Gold Spoon Candidates”. What I don’t hear from either Hillary’s or Jeb Bush’s “people” is how hard it is now for middle class America families to survive financially since the melt down in 2008. Yes, employment has grown but salaries have not increased, Labor Unions are being weaken, voters rights are being eroded in certain States, the homeless in our major cities (run by Democrats) have grown such serious levels (and no one cares) and Swore Police Officers still shoot unarmed African-Americans even when they are naked and have served in the Air Force as we saw this week in Georgia. Basically, it’s business as usual in the United States of America. What the Democrat politicians in office miss (like the Republicans) is the waste of time and taxpayers’ money on issues of arrogance, as in the case of Hillary’s Emailgate.
This stupidity is going to cost time and money for the State Department’s staff that is going to have to wade through thousands of Hillary’s emails (which today the State Department said could weeks, maybe months and not days). This again is irresponsibility of Hillary Clinton as once again the hard working taxpayer in the United States gets no apology for the costs of wading through her thousands of emails sent and received from her personal email account for State Department business. It is like we have stated in the past regarding the incredible disregard for the taxpayers’ hard earned dollars that every time the President uses Air Force One within the United States for a “fundraiser”, it costs the US taxpayer five million dollars each time he steps on that aircraft. How many homeless people would that assist to get off the streets of our major cities? Not to mention all the small government jets we provide to Federal officials, the costs in total yearly are mind numbing.
What Hillary needs to do now, is announce if she is running or not (sorry Hillary, Emailgate has finished that choice for you once and for all) and dump that team she has since 2008. Then Hillary needs to get out and start doing the talk show rounds explaining her actions and apologizing to the people of the United States for that arrogant and stupid decision to use her personal email address instead of a supplied government email address when she was the Secretary of State.
It’s that’s simply as maybe, just maybe there is another unheard Democrat candidate for the 2016 Presidential race in the wings who will see this as a chance to jump forward as Obama did in 2008 and there is no doubt Hillary’s Emailgate has hurt Hillary. Even more worrying is the way this whole issue has being handled and that has damaged Hillary and her team even further as well as handing Jeb Bush and the Republicans a lot of mileage on this issue that will not go away lightly and they will ensure that it doesn’t go away for a very, very long time. That’s not smart politics for someone so experienced and seasoned as Hillary Clinton. Hillary’s Emailgate will come back to haunt her and her 2016 Presidential campaign again and again if the Republicans play their cards right, which I am sure they will.
(c) Editor for The Amazing Democrats (Los Angeles). March 11, 2015
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