Mediaboss Marketing

This is the email Hillary Clinton's pastor, the Rev. Bill Shillady, sent her on the morning of November 9, 2016, the day after she lost the presidential election to Donald Trump.

It is Friday, but Sunday is coming. This is not the devotional I had hoped to write. This is not the devotional you wish to receive this day. While Good Friday may be the starkest representation of a Friday that we have, life is filled with a lot of Fridays.

For the disciples and Christ's followers in the first century, Good Friday represented the day that everything fell apart. All was lost. The momentum and hope of a man claiming to be the Son of God, the Messiah who was supposed to change everything, had been executed.

Even though Jesus told his followers three days later the temple would be restored, they had no idea of what that Sunday would be. They betrayed, denied, mourned, fled and hid. They did just about everything BUT feel good about Friday and their circumstances.

For us, Friday is the phone call from the doctor that the cancer is back. It's the news that you have lost your job. It's the betrayal of a friend, the loss of someone dear. Friday is the day that it all falls apart and all hope is lost. We all have Fridays. But, as the saying goes, "Sunday's coming!"

Today, you are experiencing a Friday. Your Friday is what happened in the last few weeks and last night in the tragic loss. But Sunday is coming!

Jesus completed the excruciating task of giving up his life as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. It was his faith and belief in his heavenly Father, that gave him the grace and peace to submit to Friday. While death had seemingly won, Jesus knew better. When he said, "It is finished," it wasn't meant to be a statement of concession. It was a declaration that a new day was on the way.

Friday is finished. Sunday is coming. Death will be shattered. Hope will be restored. But first, we must live through the darkness and seeming hopelessness of Friday.

You know one of my favorite sayings is "God doesn't close one door without opening another, but it can be hell in the hallway." My sister Hillary. You, our nation, our world is experiencing a black Friday. Our hope is that Sunday is coming. But it might well be hell for a while.

Read more:
First on CNN: The email Hillary Clinton's pastor sent her the day after the election - CNN

Exclusive: President Trump has shattered the hope of many peace-oriented Americans that he would pull back from U.S. foreign interventions, but Hillary Clinton might have pursued even more wars, notes James W. Carden.

By James W. Carden

The alliance between neoconservatives and the Democratic foreign policy establishment, which is largely made up of former Obama administration officials and former Clinton campaign surrogates, has been much noted of late, particularly since the formation of the German Marshall Funds Alliance for Democracy Project which brings together high-profile members of both groups in an effort to fight what is loosely (and often inaccurately) defined as Russian disinformation.

Those who applaud the new alignment are quick to point out that Donald J. Trump who, by virtue of his volatile temperament and his alarming ignorance and inexperience, is a menace to his country and the planet. And at this stage in Mr. Trumps presidency, that would seem unarguable.

And yet, Clinton partisans charge that those who withheld their support from Clinton not only bear responsibility for Trump, but also had no right to do so since it was, according to them, obvious that Clinton would have been, among other things, a more responsible steward of U.S. foreign policy than Trump.

And so, given the extreme bitterness that Hillary Clintons loss has engendered among a number of prominent members of the liberal commentariat, it might be worth looking at what her campaign promised with regard to foreign policy to see if the above criticism holds water.

The argument here isnt that Trump isnt awful (which is something Ive never argued); its that hes proven to be every bit as bad as some of us reasonably expected Clinton would have been; and if one takes the time to consult the Clinton campaigns own briefing papers and fact sheets, one will find that on issue after issue, Clinton invariably took hawkish positions that reflected the fact that Clinton was (and remains) a saber-rattler par excellence very much on par with the current occupant of the White House.

When North Korea conducted a nuclear test in September 2016, she released a statement, if not quite promising fire and fury, that did declare: North Koreas decision to conduct another nuclear test is outrageous and unacceptable. This constitutes a direct threat to the United States, and we cannot and will never accept this.

No Regrets on Regime Change

Beyond that, Clinton remained a firm believer in regime-change strategies.On Syria, the Clinton campaign proposed instituting a coalition no-fly zone in the air coupled with safe zones on the ground to protect Syrian civilians and create leverage for a diplomatic resolution that includes Assads departure. She supported the deployment of special operating forces to Syria and strongly urged President Obama to arm moderate rebels in support of the eventual removal of the brutal Assad regime.

Clinton also favored escalation in other hot spots.On Iran, the Clinton campaign outlined a plan to counter Irans other malicious behavior which included pledges to deepen Americas unshakeable commitment to Israels security; expand our military presence in the region; increase security cooperation in areas like intelligence sharing, military backing and missile defense with our Gulf allies, to ensure they can defend themselves against Iranian aggression; and build a coalition to counter Irans proxies.

When we also factor in Clintons support for the NATOs illegal airstrikes on Kosovo (1999), her vote to authorize the second Iraq War (2003), her enthusiastic support for sending more troops to fight and die in Afghanistan (2009), and her disastrous embrace of regime change in Libya (2011) and Syria (2012), how can anyone be sure that her administrations foreign policy would have been much of an improvement over what we now have?

Indeed, those who threw their support behind Clintons vision of American world leadership, like those associated with the Alliance for Democracy, really, with the notable exception of Trumps abandonment of the Paris Climate Accord, have little to complain about.

Trump has done much as Clinton would have done by, among other things: slapping sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea; pledging unlimited support toIsrael; reassuring our allies in the Persian Gulf and eastern Europe; condemning Russias actions in eastern Ukraine; expanding military operations in eastern Syria; and lobbing none-to-veiled threats at the left-wing government in Venezuela.

So while its easy and almost certainly emotionally satisfying to the legions of Clinton supporters to tell themselves (and their readers) that of course Hillary would have been a better of steward of U.S. foreign policy than Trump, that assertion remains both unprovable and, given her record, highly questionable.

James W. Carden served as an adviser on Russia policy at the US State Department. Currently a contributing writer at The Nation magazine, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Quartz, The American Conservative and The National Interest.

See the original post here:
Hillary Clinton Promised Wars, Too - Consortium News

Marcus Martin was injured when a Dodge Challenger drove through a group protesting an white nationalist rally Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Alex Jones, a conspiracy-minded conservative commentator, said the Charlottesville, Va., protests and counter-protests on Aug. 11-12, were staged acts of civil unrest funded by liberal interests to hurt conservatives and President Donald Trump.

In a pair of videos posted on his website Infowars.com, Jones accused the Southern Poverty Law Center of going to "central casting" to hire actors to "dress up as white supremacists." There is no evidence that is true, and Jones provided no evidence to support his claim in his video.

Jones then claimed the foundation for the Charlottesville protests is seen in emails between the Democratic Party and George Soros, a billionaire who often supports liberal causes.

"It was clear once Trump got inaugurated, they were going to go for civil unrest," Jones said.

"If you go back to the Wikileaks, from over a year ago, the Democratic Party is sending emails to George Soros and back and forth at the highest levels of the Democratic Party saying, Were losing the public. Minorities are getting into the free market. We (Democrats) want to keep people in their mothers basement as baristas.

"Remember even Hillary said that. What are we going to do to keep control of them? Keep them in the dark, keep them desperate.

"These are quotes. Hundreds and hundreds of emails," Jones said." Weve covered them linking to them."

While Jones offered no evidence the Charlottesville protests were staged, he did say there are quotes from Soros, Clinton or Democratic Party officials in emails talking about controlling minoritiesand stoking fear in the public to "keep them desperate" and "keep control of them."

So we decided to see if there is any evidence of that.

We couldnt find any. (We reached out to Jones through the media contact form on his Infowars.com website and did not hear back.)

For this fact-check, we consulted three email batches Jones could be talking about -- the emails Hillary Clinton made public during her time as secretary of state (search the government database), the leaked emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta (search the Podesta emails), or the leaked emails of the Democratic National Committee (search the DNC email database).

The George Soros connection

Jones claimed the "Democratic Party is sending emails to George Soros and back and forth at the highest levels of the Democratic Party saying, Were losing the public. Minorities are getting into the free market. We (Democrats) want to keep people in their mothers basement as baristas."

There are 15 emails in the DNC email database that mention the word "Soros," and five of those come from Politico email newsletters. Of the remaining 10, five reference news coverage and one is text of a speech from Trump referencing Soros ("Forget Soros, leave him alone, hes got enough problems.")

The other four are from May 22, 2016, and discuss a mobile application someone was building to support the Democratic nominee. The developer of the application was looking for funding for the project, including from Soros.

We also searched under Soros Open Society Foundation or OSF. We found four additional emails, the most interesting of which appears to be a communications officer for OSF trying to schedule a tour of the White House.

We did find an email, which Infowars has written about, that Soros sent to Clinton while she was secretary of state (see the email).

The 2011 email is about unrest in Albania, which included a series of anti-government protests amid corruption charges.

In the email, Soros asks Clinton to bring "the full weight of the international community" to try and ease tensions in the country. Soros writes that he is particularly concerned of the actions of Albanias prime minister and that Soros has heard of videotape showing national guard members firing on demonstrators.

Infowars also has written about a 2014 email from Podestas account in which Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said Clinton would only attend a fundraiser for a Soros-supported group, America Votes, "to make Soros happy."

The most recent emails leaked from Podestas account are from March 2016, and seem to be related to a meeting between Soros and Podesta.

"In general I think George is more interested in talking about policy than the campaign per se, though I cant imagine you wont spend some time on politics," Soros aide Michael Vachon wrote (read the email). "In a separate email I will send you Georges latest thinking on the migration crisis, which he is spending a lot of time on. His other big preoccupation these days is Ukraine. Both the migration crisis and Ukraine are part of his view of Europe as falling apart, and the US as ultimately not doing enough to prevent the political disintegration of its most important ally."

Heres the bottom line: Whatever the emails say about Soros access to top Democrats, including Clinton, they dont say anything akin to what Jones claimed.

The Hillary Clinton connection

Its a bit easier to triangulate what Jones was talking about when he said, "Remember even Hillary said that. What are we going to do to keep control of them. Keep them in the dark, keep them desperate. "

Hes likely referring to leaked audio of a February 2016 Clinton fundraiser in which Clinton was talking about the supporters of Bernie Sanders. Infowars wrote about this, too.

Here is what Clinton said (bold emphasis is ours):

Clinton: "Some are new to politics completely. Theyre children of the Great Recession. And they are living in their parents basement. They feel they got their education and the jobs that are available to them are not at all what they envisioned for themselves. And they dont see much of a future. I met with a group of young black millennials today and you know one of the young women said, "You know, none of us feel that we have the job that we should have gotten out of college. And we dont believe the job market is going to give us much of a chance." So that is a mindset that is really affecting their politics. And so if youre feeling like youre consigned to, you know, being a barista, or you know, some other job that doesnt pay a lot, and doesnt have some other ladder of opportunity attached to it, then the idea that maybe, just maybe, you could be part of a political revolution is pretty appealing. So I think we should all be really understanding of that and should try to do the best we can not to be, you know, a wet blanket on idealism. We want people to be idealistic. We want them to set big goals. But to take what we can achieve now and try to present them as bigger goals."

You can listen to the comments here, courtesy of the Intercept, but you can see how Jones distorts Clintons comments.

Jones said Democrats wanted to keep "people in their mothers basement as baristas," to "control them," "keep them desperate."

But Clinton was talking about people new to politics who grew up at a time when opportunities were difficult to find. She never once discussed controlling or keeping people desperate. Clinton did face criticism for describing Sanders supporters as people living in their parents basement, but thats not what Jones was saying.

Our ruling

Jones said, "if you go back to the Wikileaks, from over a year ago, the Democratic Party is sending emails to George Soros and back and forth at the highest levels of the Democratic Party saying, Were losing the public. Minorities are getting into free market. We (Democrats) want to keep people in their mothers basement as baristas. "Remember even Hillary said that. What are we going to do to keep control of them? Keep them in the dark, keep them desperate.

Jones comments were part of a broader accusation that the events in Charlottesville were staged by liberals and coordinated by top Democrats.

We can find no evidence that Jones broad attack, or his specific claim about comments made by Soros, Clinton or Democrats in emails, checks out. Clinton did describe supporters of Bernie Sanders as working as baristas or living in their parents basements. But thats well short of what Jones alleged.

We rate this claim Pants on Fire.

Share the Facts

2017-08-14 17:12:21 UTC

1

1

7

Pants on Fire

Emails show Democrats, Hillary Clinton and George Soros instigated and orchestrated racial protests in Charlottesville by trying to "control" and keep people "desperate."

Alex Jones

Editor, Infowars

In a video

Saturday, August 12, 2017

2017-08-12

Here is the original post:
Infowars' Alex Jones falsely says George Soros, Hillary Clinton instigated Charlottesville violence - PolitiFact

In this April 6, 2017, file photo, former United States Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton speaks during the Eighth Annual Women In The World Summit at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City.

For over 600 days, Hillary Clinton's pastor wrote daily inspirational letters drawn from Biblical scripture during the presidential campaign.

Hundreds of those letters have now been compiled in a book, "Strong For a Moment Like This." The collection features a letter sent in the aftermath of her election loss.

Rev. Dr. Bill Shillady, the New York-based executive director of the United Methodist City Society, has been a longtime friend and pastor to the former U.S. secretary of state, senator and first lady.

I wrote to her on a daily basis. If I was not writing then there was team of writers, Shillady said during a phone interview with NBC.

The collection, published by Abingdon Press, includes 365 of the more than 600 devotions written for Clinton, along with personal notes, portions of her speeches, and headlines that provide context for that days devotion.

On the difficult days, like the terrorist incidents, we dug deep and found gratitude for life, he said.

The day after the 2016 election, Shillady sent a letter beginning with the title "Sunday Is Coming" and ending with one of his cherished phrases.

"You know one of my favorite sayings is 'God doesn't close one door without opening another, but it can be hell in the hallway,'" he wrote in the last paragraph. "My sister Hillary. You, our nation, our world is experiencing a black Friday. Our hope is that Sunday is coming. But it might well be hell for a while."

Here is the letter "Sunday Is Coming":

According to Shillady, the post-election letter has been shared over 40,000 times on social media. The letter shares the struggle of disciples after the loss of Jesus Christ and the reminder that for Clinton there was more to be grateful for in life.

Most of the response has been positive and some thought I was comparing her to Christ that is simply not true, he said. If you really read it then you will understand.

The book, "Strong For a Moment Like This,"is due for sale in stores and online on Aug. 15.

Shillady and his team of writers came from different backgrounds, including Presbyterian, Baptist and a clergy of women. All the clergy writers, hopeful about the outcome of the election, used daily news headlines as a source of inspiration for the devotions.

A German theologian Karl Barth said something like 'a pastor is not worth their weight if they dont have a newspaper in one hand and a Bible in the other,' he said. [The devotions] reminded her that she was child of God and of her strength, qualities this campaign demanded from her.

NBC contacted the Clinton Foundation for a comment about the book and have not yet received a response.

Shillady said each chapter in the book is organized into 12 themes, such as forgiveness, doing good, courage, and women.

Published 2 hours ago

The rest is here:
Hillary Clinton's Pastor Reveals Post-Election Letter in Book - NBC4 Washington

When the entire inevitable first female president train flew off the tracks in spectacular fashion last November there seemed to be a sense that the related stories of potential criminal investigations into Hillary Clintons handling of classified documents was going away as well. After all, hadnt the FBI concluded that it was pretty much a done deal? (At least a couple of times as I recall.) It had become more of a campaign talking point than anything else, and with defeat having been snatched from the jaws of victory, couldnt you all just let the poor woman be?

In the months since then it feels as if nobody has even been talking about it, with the exception of the occasional Tweet from the President when he wanted to criticize Jeff Sessions. But under the covers there was still a slow, grinding investigation taking place. Tens of thousands of documents had been turned over by the State Department and more of them kept popping up in unexpected places. As the Washington Times reported this weekend, the final chapter has yet to be written in this saga and additional classified material may still be coming to light.

The Hillary Clinton email fiasco isnt ending anytime soon, with State Department officials saying they have no idea when they will finish sorting though and releasing the previously hidden messages.

More classified documents that the former secretary of state improperly handled keep coming to light.

The Trump administration doesnt even know if it has hunted down every trace of the emails that Mrs. Clinton a former first lady, U.S. senator, top diplomat and Democratic presidential nominee sent from a secret email server stashed in her home

This June, the FBI provided approximately 7,000 additional documents recovered from the laptop computer shared by top Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her husband, Anthony Weiner, whose habitual sexting cost him a seat in Congress, the mayoral election in New York and ultimately his marriage to Ms. Abedin.

We have not yet determined how many of these documents are State Department records as opposed to personal emails, nor have we determined how many documents are duplicative of material already in our possession, said the official.

So its been almost two months since all of the Carlos Danger material was turned over. A fair question is being raised here as to why its taking so long to go through everything. While the campaign was still going on there was a much greater sense of urgency (or so it seemed) and they processed considerably larger volumes last summer in a shorter period of time. Did they simply assign fewer people and resources to it once the election was over and the spotlight had moved elsewhere?

I suppose thats one possibility. But heres another thought to ponder. That entire Loretta Lynch story has been blowing up all over again this summer and its raised additional questions about how James Comey was handling the email investigation from the beginning. Now there are fresh sets of eyes at State, the DoJ and the FBI. Is it conceivable that they arent in quite as much of a hurry to put the entire story to rest as the Obama administration was?

That remains unknown for the time being. One thing we can count on, though, is that defenders of Clinton will label this an unnecessary distraction, a vindictive political witch hunt and everything else you would expect. But is it? If the questions about the former First Ladys handling of classified material were valid in terms of criminal culpability last summer, are they any less so now that shes exited the public stage? (For the most part, anyway.) The only thing we can probably count on for sure is that Clinton will be unlikely to get a presidential pardon any time soon if charges are still possible.

View post:
I bet you thought the Hillary Clinton email scandal was over - Hot Air