Welcome to Buster's Blog

Irregular commentary on whatever's on my mind -- politics, sports, current events, and life in general. After twenty years of writing business and community newsletters, fifteen years of fantasy baseball newsletters, and two years of email "columns", this is, I suppose, the inevitable result: the awful conceit that someone might actually care to read what I have to say. Posts may be added often, rarely, or never again. As always, my mood and motivation are unpredictable.

Buster Gammons















Sunday, January 31, 2016

The Way-Back Machine Puts The Score At 5,000,000 to 30,000


Which shiny object shall we fixate upon today?  How about Hillary Clinton's email again?  Again?  Email-ghazi!!

Last week, the State Dept. declined to release twenty-two of her old emails, saying they may have contained "top secret" info.  None were classified at the time they were sent, and there is zero evidence that any of her emails ever caused a security breach or harm of any sort.  Most of America yawned, but conservatives and their media outlets once again ignited their collective hair.  

I have a friend who loves to tell anyone who will listen that Hillary "should be in jail."  I invite him and others like him to join Mr. Peabody and Sherman as they set the Way-Back Machine for the years 2006 and 2007:

Late in the year 2006, in a highly partisan move, the administration of President George W. Bush summarily fired eight U.S. attorneys from the Justice Dept.  All eight were Republicans, but they weren't Republican enough for Dubya's liking.  Their dismissal was brazenly unwarranted, and a Congressional probe resulted.  In early 2007, when that panel asked the Bush administration for all its email records, the White House announced that, conveniently, five million emails -- two entire years' worth! -- had somehow been irretrievably "lost."  How did this happen?  Gosh, sorry, we don't know.  Oops!

It turns out that the majority of White House communication was being run through a private server and email accounts controlled by the Republican National Committee, not a public .gov account.  Most White House staffers used RNC accounts, and Deputy Chief-of-Staff (a.k.a. Bush's Brain) Karl Rove used it for all of his email.  And all of it was just suddenly, inexplicably gone, and nothing could be done.

Do you remember all the media scrutiny and public uproar and moral outrage that resulted from this disclosure of five-friggin'-million missing official government emails?  No, you don't, because there was none.  That week, Meet The Press, Face the Nation, and Fox News Sunday didn't mention it at all.  There was some subsequent attention, but not much, and it quickly dropped off the media radar screen.  No one called for Karl Rove to go to jail (although even now that would be a fine place for him to stay).

That's history.  Today, Hillary gets all the grief, but if you're keeping score in the contest of missing private emails used for government business, it's Republicans 5,000,000 to Democrats 30,000.  That's a blow-out.  Game over.  Republicans win.

http://bustergammons.blogspot.com/2015/09/whats-deal-with-hillarys-emails-buster.html





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