Emailgateski

~ susie

So maybe not such a bad thing that Hillary Clinton had her own email system, huh?

Some of President Obama’s email correspondence was swept up by Russian hackers last year in a breach of the White House’s unclassified computer system that was far more intrusive and worrisome than has been publicly acknowledged, according to senior American officials briefed on the investigation.

The hackers, who also got deeply into the State Department’s unclassified system, do not appear to have penetrated closely guarded servers that control the message traffic from Mr. Obama’s BlackBerry, which he or an aide carries constantly.

But they obtained access to the email archives of people inside the White House, and perhaps some outside, with whom Mr. Obama regularly communicated. From those accounts, they reached emails that the president had sent and received, according to officials briefed on the investigation.

The reality-based world

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

RED APPARITION

I always think it’s funny when people lay claim to some “reality-based” world in response to stories like this. They’re very, very common (remember the recent one where rescuers of a baby heard a voice calling from a sunken car, “Help, help” when the mother was already dead?). And so-called “crisis apparitions” are the most commonly documented form of psychic phenomena. (It’s really funny to read the theories researchers come up with as they twist themselves in knots to explain them, too.) I’ll bet if you ask around in your own family, at least one person heard from a loved one who died — at the same time they were actually dying.

Just admit we don’t know or understand everything. Life is full of many mysterious miracles:

Scott Mayhew was working on a car inside his Utah garage Monday when it fell off the jack and onto his chest; trapped, he cried for help for an hour and a half to no avail. “He said he remembers he could barely breathe,” wife Nicole tells Fox 13. “He didn’t know what was going to happen.” What happened was that she came home, found him, called 911, and got a neighbor to help lift the vehicle using the jack. It’s the why she came home that’s remarkable: She was at work that morning and suddenly had a premonition. “I just said I need to go check on him working on the car, I just believe a spirit told me,” she says.

As she got to their Saratoga Springs home and heard her husband calling, she had a vision of what she’d find in the garage: “I thought, ‘it’s on him, it’’s got to be on him, the car,’ that’s what’s in my head, so I knew immediately,” she says. She found the 43-year-old father of five, who says he’d been praying for her to come home, under the Ford Explorer. Paramedics responded, and though responders were concerned about possible internal bleeding, Scott is expected to make a full recovery; he broke six ribs.

That Chris Christie story about his mother on her deathbed

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie

Scott Raab in Esquire about the Christie story that’s apparently knocking the voters dead in New Hampshire:

There’s a story Chris Christie loves to tell about his mother on her deathbed, how he had flown to be by her side for her final moments of life, and how she shooed him back to work, telling him “there’s nothing left unsaid between us.”

It’s touching, at least according to the journalists who’ve profiled Christie and who invariably cite this anecdote and characterize it as touching. I myself have heard him serve it up at a couple of his town halls, and I can attest to the fact that the crowds ate it up.

I was not touched, except by The People’s endless hunger for bullshit. Any journalist who takes this fable at face value in order to make some self-evident point about Christie’s skill as a candidate is either a putz or part of the long con. I’ve spent enough time around politicians to know that deep within each resides the soul of a siding salesman. The mama’s-last-words bit reveals nothing about Christie that isn’t entirely calibrated as theatre. It is a scripted performance, as were the many town hall shout-downs Christie’s media people eagerly uploaded to YouTube before the Great Fort Lee Clusterfk.
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Bless their hearts

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

APTOPIX Italy Pope Epiphany

Boy, they really are worried about this pope’s influence. What if he actually got people to stop believing climate change was a hoax? What would happen to their paychecks? By the way, the Pope happens to have a masters degree in chemistry, so they’re going to have to argue with someone who actually understands science:

You’ll never guess what crazy shenanigans the folks at the climate denying Heartland Institute — I’m sorry, I meant to say “the world’s leading think tank promoting scientific skepticism about man-caused global warming” — are up to now.

According to their latest press release, the crew is heading to Rome, to “advise Pope Francis on climate policy.” Yes, that’s actually how they put it. It seems the Pope’s upcoming encyclical on climate action is rubbing the group the wrong way, probably because he’s expected to argue, at a Vatican summit next week, that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a moral and religious imperative. It’s a statement that’s going to be hard for Christians to ignore, which is why it’s up to Heartland’s anti-science “real scientists” to show the Pope the error of his ways before it’s too late.

“The Holy Father is being misled by ‘experts’ at the United Nations who have proven unworthy of his trust,” Heartland Institute President Joseph Bast said in a statement. “Humans are not causing a climate crisis on God’s Green Earth — in fact, they are fulfilling their Biblical duty to protect and use it for the benefit of humanity.” Did you hear that, Your Holiness? The overwhelming majority of scientists are wrong about climate change, and you don’t understand the bible.

“Though Pope Francis’s heart is surely in the right place,” Bast continued, “he would do his flock and the world a disservice by putting his moral authority behind the United Nations’ unscientific agenda on the climate.”

‘You don’t have a single piece of evidence’

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday pointed out to conservative author Peter Schweizer that his new book failed to connect the dots between speaking fees earned by former President Bill Clinton and policies supported by Hillary Clinton while she served as secretary of state. During an interview on Fox News Sunday about his book, “Clinton… Continue reading “‘You don’t have a single piece of evidence’” →