Hillary Landslide?
 By John D. Turner
 27 Aug 2016

This is one of the oddest (to put it mildly) election years I have ever witnessed; and one of the most crucial. I know I keep saying that every election year – but when you are balanced on a tightrope, every next step is crucial; and as a nation, we are balanced on a tightrope, whether most of the electorate is aware or not. It is as if you were to take Blind Justice and put her on a high wire with her blindfold in place and the scales taking the place of the balancing rod.

It isn’t just the differences in the candidates. It isn’t even the fact that both candidates from both major parties are deeply flawed. Nor is it the fact that, despite all the media hype for Hillary and the condemnation of Trump in the press, neither side seems to be able to muster much enthusiasm for voting this year, at least for their designated candidates.

In fact, it is the media hype for Hillary and against Trump that I find the most significant hallmark of this election cycle. The mainstream media has dropped all pretense of “objectivity” on this one and is so thoroughly in the tank for Hillary that, to a person like me who expects (but seldom gets) objectivity on the part of journalists, it is downright disgusting. I expect political spin from talk show hosts and political commentators. That’s their job. But I expect objectivity from journalists because that is their job. Or at least I thought it was; no more I guess in progressive America.

One of the hallmarks of this election cycle has been the death of American journalism. We are all political activists now. Michael Goodwin, writing for the New York Post, summed it up in one phrase; “American journalism is collapsing before our eyes.” Writes Michael:

The frenzy to bury Trump is not limited to the Clinton campaign and the Obama White House. They are working hand-in-hand with what was considered the cream of the nation’s news organizations.

The shameful display of naked partisanship by the elite media is unlike anything seen in modern America.

The largest broadcast networks — CBS, NBC and ABC — and major newspapers like The New York Times and Washington Post have jettisoned all pretense of fair play. Their fierce determination to keep Trump out of the Oval Office has no precedent.

Indeed, no foreign enemy, no terror group, no native criminal gang, suffers the daily beating that Trump does. The mad mullahs of Iran, who call America the Great Satan and vow to wipe Israel off the map, are treated gently by comparison.

He goes on to recount his early days in news, which began at the New York Times during the civil-rights era and the Vietnam conflict. He describes himself then as young and liberal and “full of certainty about right and wrong.” But he says, the man in charge of the paper “knew his reporters leaned left, so he leaned right to keep the paper straight.” He continues:
That meant the Times, except for the opinion pages, was scrubbed free of reporters’ political views, an edict that was enforced by giving the opinion and news operations separate editors. The church-and-state structure was one reason the Times was considered the flagship of journalism.

Those days are gone. The Times now is so out of the closet as a Clinton shill that it is giving itself permission to violate any semblance of evenhandedness in its news pages as well as its opinion pages.

That is the New York Times; once the most respected newspaper in the country. But you see it everywhere these days. Take a look at CNN – “the most trusted name in news.” Look at how they portray Hillary Clinton. Look at how they portray Donald Trump. When Trump is mentioned, it is in a negative context. The opposite is true with Hillary. Look at the coverage. Listen to the sound bites. Dig a little deeper. How do they cover her scandals? Did you know there even were scandals? Or is everything you hear being portrayed as evil Republicans picking on poor Hillary?

How is it that one of the most corrupt politicians to ever run for the office, one who 68 percent of Americans find dishonest and untrustworthy, is about to be elected to the highest office in the land? Do Americans no longer care about such things? Have we reached a point now in our history where we expect this of our leaders and, while it might not be OK, is simply isn’t an issue any longer? Is the fact that Hillary is a woman more important than the fact that she spent most of her time as Secretary of State lining her pockets and selling influence at a rate that would make the most jaded third world dictator green with envy?

We hear a lot about Trump University. Where is all the journalistic digging on the Clinton Foundation?

Trump University is the evil invention of a rich fat-cat billionaire to bilk thousands of hard-working Americans out of their money by selling them worthless diplomas. The Clinton Foundation on the other hand, is a magnificent example of the attempt by honest and hard-working politicians Bill and Hillary Clinton to lift up the masses and give them a better standard of living. What matter if Hillary used her position as Secretary of State to ensure cash flows from foreign countries to those coffers; it was for a good cause, wasn’t it? Ends justifies the means, right? And if she skims a few million or even tens of millions off the top to subsidize her lifestyle, who cares? She deserves it, right? If she continues to do so as President (and why wouldn’t she), so what? She may be corrupt but at least she isn’t evil.

Donald Trump makes an off-the-cuff remark alluding to the possibility that Russia might have Hillary Clinton’s “missing” emails; something that a lot of us out here have no doubt considered as well. The headlines the next day in the New York Times read “Donald Trump Calls on Russia to Find Hillary Clinton’s Missing Emails,” with the absurd premise that Trump had called on the Russians to “engage in cyberespionage” against Hillary. The leading line in the article states “Donald J. Trump said on Wednesday that he hoped Russian intelligence services had successfully hacked Hillary Clinton’s email, and encouraged them to publish whatever they may have stolen, essentially urging a foreign adversary to conduct cyberespionage against a former secretary of state.”

Essentially the same story was published in the Huffington Post, Boston Globe, Denver Post, and other newspapers and media outlets across the country. Interestingly, the stories echoed the talking points the Democrats put forward almost immediately.

In the first place, since Hillary has supposedly turned over all her email, she has stated repeatedly that she has, and since her server has been wiped clean and then turned over to the FBI, it would be extremely difficult at this point for the Russians to conduct “cyberespionage” on Hillary in an effort to turn up the missing emails. The entire premise is illogical on its face. In the second place, that is not what Trump said. It is sort of hard to find, but the full context of the actual quote is as follows:

If they hacked, they probably have her 33,000 emails. I hope they do. I wish I had that power. I'd love to have that power [to orchestrate the alleged email hack and leak].

They probably have her 33,000 emails that she lost and deleted. You'd see some beauties, so we'll see.

Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if that happens. That'll be nice.

Russia has no respect for our country. And that's why, if it is Russia, nobody even knows its Russia, it was probably China. ... It shows how weak we are. It shows how disrespected we are.

I say sort of hard to find because the only part that is quoted in most articles is the bolded part. It is obvious from the context that Trump is not calling on Russia to hack Clinton. What he is saying is that if the hack occurred, and if it was Russia, that it would be great if they would turn over the missing emails and settle the issue once and for all. Only the Democrats and the media could misconstrue that statement, made off the cuff, as calling for Russia to hack Hillary Clinton.

But hey; if you expect to turn on your television these days or open your newspaper or magazine and hear truth, you are delusional. If you want the truth, you have to dig, and even then you may not find it. You may have to settle for an approximation of the truth and your gut instincts instead.

Here is a much more reasoned article on the same topic. But of course, it isn’t found in the local paper or cable news channel. It is an article from GlobalResearch, the Center for Research on Globalization. Not someone most people are likely to read or even know exists.

The narrative that Trump hopes Russia hacks Hillary is just a small part of a much larger narrative that paints the evil Trump as “toadying” up to Putin; perhaps in cahoots with Putin for world domination. Who knows?

But what about Hillary’s “ties” to Russia? How about the uranium deal she helped broker with the Russians that netted Bill a cool $500,000 for giving a speech in Moscow and led to donations of $145 million to the Clinton Foundation by the interested parties during the time the deal was up for State Department approval, resulting in Russia acquiring 20% of America’s uranium deposits? Interestingly, the New York Times broke this story in 2015.

Of course, like the FBI director, even though they were able to show a paper trail and infer quite a bit, somehow it fell short of being able to say that the donations “played any role in the approval of the uranium deal,” although they did note that “the episode underscores the special ethical challenges presented by the Clinton Foundation, headed by a former president who relied heavily on foreign cash to accumulate $250 million in assets even as his wife helped steer American foreign policy as secretary of state, presiding over decisions with the potential to benefit the foundation’s donors.” And this being 2016, this is now relegated to the category of “old news.”

Others have picked up the story and kept it alive, but as many of these sources are on the right, and pretty much all are internet sources and not mainstream media, who but a few are aware of them?

Trump rallies draw far larger crowds than Hillary Clinton does. In fact, Hillary has been limiting her public appearances and speaks little to the press (it has been over 200 days since she has held a press conference). Yet Hillary leads in the polls. Not only does she lead, but the media is now shouting from the rooftops that Hillary’s victory in November is not only inevitable, but that she will win in a landslide.

Read the polling articles. Notice how the words are couched. If you are college educated (read smart), you are over-the-top for Hillary. If you are a non-college educated white male (read Neanderthal), then you support Trump.

Who wants to be thought of as dumb?

Every word that falls from Donald Trump’s lips is scrutinized ten ways from Sunday; every word Hillary speaks is as if it fell from the lips of God. Hillary says she was cleared by the FBI, that the FBI director says she didn’t lie, and that everything she did was all legal and above board; that she “tries to level” with the American people, and the press shouts Hosanna!

Clinton claimed that she used her email server for her convenience so that she would only have to use one device for email; the FBI however found that she used multiple devices. Lie.

Clinton repeatedly said she didn’t have classified emails on her server but the investigation found that 113 of her emails had classified material in them and three of those actually had classification markers. Another lie. There shouldn’t have been classified material on an unclassified system in the first place. Such an event, called “spillage,” would be taken quite seriously where I work. Apparently though, in Hillary’s world, it doesn’t rise to the level of even being a security incident.

And now we find out that there are tens of thousands of additional “missing” emails that we knew nothing about, as well as notes that the State Department was supposed to have turned over seven months ago that they now say they will turn over – but not until after the election.

One has to wonder if perhaps the Russians could shed some light on the subject. I could go on – but this is supposed to be an article, not a book, and the topic is really media bias, not Hillary’s many lies.

The point is that people in the mainstream media have decided that, as flawed as she may be, a Hillary Clinton presidency is infinitely preferable to a Donald Trump presidency. No surprise there – as has been noted before, mainstream media figures vote 85% Democrat in elections, and give over 95% of their political contributions to the Democrat Party or Democrat politicians. This time however, perhaps sensing the unravelling of the significant Progressive accomplishments made by Barack Obama, and with the Supreme Court within their grasp, they have gone all-in to not only add the usual left-wing slant to their reporting, but to become unpaid campaign shills for the DNC and Hillary Clinton in particular.

At least I am assuming they are unpaid, other than their usual salaries of course.