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Is Hillary Clinton on the verge of a meltdown?

On the heels of reports that many Democrats arent exactly thrilled with the idea of her running for president again, the former First Lady last week launched a bizarre attack on the Democratic National Committee, suggesting that it had sabotaged her 2016 campaign by failing to set up a top-notch data operation to help her identify and trackkey voter groups, especially in the swing states.

Clinton claimed that the DNC data operation was so inept and underfunded, that she had to contribute her own campaign money just to keep it going.

Its only the latest excuse that Clinton has invented to try to explain how she got beaten last fall, and its left many Democrats apoplectic.

Fucking bullshit, is how Andrew Therriault, the former director of DNC data operations, reacted in a tweet after learning of Clintons comments. In fact, there was plenty of data available showing that none of the key Rust Belt States she ended up losing, including Pennsylvania and Michigan were safe but Clintons campaign simply ignored that data on the assumption that they knew the landscape better, he noted.

Clintons comments come after news reports have circulated that many Democrats are growing leery of Clintons recent efforts to declare herself the leader of the resistance to Trumps presidency.

In a press conference several weeks ago, Clinton described her plans to gin up grassroots protest against Trump domestic and foreign policies. Many analysts saw it as a transparent attempt to boost her prospects for yet another bid for the Democratic Party nomination in 2020.

Clinton, though widely criticized for two disastrous White House bids in 2008 and 2006, seems desperate to get back in the political game by any means possible.

Back in February, her allies floated the idea that she might run for Mayor of New York. The current Democratic mayor, Bill De Blasio, was seen as facing tough re-election prospects due to a corruption scandal.

But a poll taken among New Yorkers found overwhelming opposition to the idea. And DeBlasio no longer appears so vulnerable.

The DNCs Therriault has deleted his angry tweets about Clinton but other Democrats close to the DNC have begun weighing in.

Most have indirectly supported Therriault noting that the DNC data operation helped power Democrats to a razor-thin victory in the governors race in North Carolina last November.

In an interview with the Hill newspaper, Tom Bonier, the CEO of TargetSmart, a data firm that works with many Democratic clients, defended the DNCs 2016 efforts as the most robust data operation the DNC has ever seen.

Bonier also noted in a series of tweets that, the Clinton team was using DNC data throughout the primary. If it was that bad, they knew that for two years but did nothing.

Much of the DNCs data operation traces its root to Barack Obamas two successful presidential campaigns. Obama pioneered methods of organizing campaign volunteers and of identifying voter niches by election district that vastly overshadowed the GOPs own field operation. These advanced techniques supported by social media were widely credited with having propelled Obama over John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012

Clinton was supposed to have inherited these methods and some of the personnel that proved so instrumental to Obama. Any many Democrats hoped that inheritance would allow Clinton to overcome the kind of clunky and disorganized field operations that doomed her own campaign in 2008.

But party insiders say that it was hard to teach the old Clinton dog new Obama tricks.

The data are merely the raw ingredients, argues John Hanger a Democratic campaign consultant. [Its] the chef that decides what to do with them.

And the chef, Clintons campaign team, was simply not up to the job.

Few Democratic officials seem willing to speak out publicly against a third Clinton bid for the presidency. The DNCs recently elected chair, Tom Perez, is a staunch Clinton loyalist. He was rumored to have been one of two Hispanic candidates to be vetted as her possible running mate in 2016.

When asked directly, Perez and others, including Clintons former campaign manager Robby Mook, seem to welcome the idea of her running again.

But Clintons comments and her public demeanor are beginning to raise eyebrows.

During her recent Wellesley commencement address she broke into a prolonged coughing fit much like previous ones that have raised concerns about the state of her health and her ability to survive the stresses of the presidency were she to be elected. And just as baffling was her dress. Wearing a black beret, Clinton seemed to be channeling the ghost of Monica Lewinsky, the former white House intern whose affair with Bill Clinton led to his impeachment in the House, and which tarnished the campaign of his chosen successor, Al Gore.

Lewinsky was notorious for wearing a nearly identical black beret during her many appearances at campaign events where she often hugged the former president.

Clinton, of course, once famously dismissed Lewinsky as a narcissistic loony-toon.

But some of the former First Ladys angry and disappointed critics whove grown tired of her non-stop grandstanding and finger-pointing are beginning to wonder if shes suffering from a similar syndrome

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Hillary Clinton's Latest Excuse For Losing Has Some Dems Questioning Her Mental Health - The Daily Caller

Twitter users have reacted with surprise and fury over excerpts from Hillary Clintons 1996 bookIt Takes A Village. On June 6, Jeanette Jing, an activist with over 33,000 followers on Twitter who supports Clinton's Democratic opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders,shared two pages of the work in which Clinton reminisces about the black prisoners who worked in the Arkansas governors mansion she shared with her husband, Bill Clinton, who led the state from 1979 to 1981 and 1983 to 1992.

When we moved in, I was told that using prison labor at the governors mansion was a longstanding tradition, which kept down costs, Clinton writes. She adds that most of the workers were convicted murderers and she became friendly with a few of them, African-American men in their thirties who had already served 12 to 18 years of their sentences.

Despite her alleged friendships with these men, Clinton tells her readers: We enforced rules strictly and sent back to prison any inmate who broke a rule. Despite having no psychological qualifications, she later asserts that these men did not have inferior IQs or an inability to apply moral reasoning but instead they may have been emotional illiterates.

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First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton talks about her new book It Takes A Village at the Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock on January 16, 1995. In the book, Clinton talks about using black prison labor in the governor's mansion. Jeff Mitchell/Reuters

Clinton makes no mention of whether the men received any money for working for her and her husband. A 2016 article from Mother Jones notes that when it comes to prison labor, some state states, including Texas, Arkansas, and Georgia, do not pay inmates at all. On Twitter, Jing wrote that Hillary Clinton was a direct participant in what @samswey correctly described as modern slavery.

Jing, who also refers to a June 5 Twitter conversation about the Clintons use of prison labor from Samuel Sinyangwe, an activist, data scientist and policy analyst. In a string of tweets, Sinyangwe talks about his experience of visiting the Louisiana state legislature and finding black prisoners serving white lawmakers for free. Sinyangwe adds that the state has the worlds highest incarceration rate, with black people making up 66 percent of the prison population. By comparison, black people make up 32 percent of Louisianas total population.

He goes on to note that prisoners working in the state legislature are serving people who support laws that make Louisiana the hardest state to hold police accountable within. Like in Arkansas, Sinyangwe adds, some of Louisianas prisoners work at the governors mansion.

In her book, Clinton tried to soften the reality of unpaid black men serving a wealthy white woman. But, 1996, the year her book came out, was also the year she made a speech in New Hampshire in support of her husbands controversial 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.

Of the legislation, which critics say ramped up mass incarceration and disproportionately affected African-Americans, Clinton said: We also have to have an organized effort against gangs. They are often the kinds of kids that are called superpredatorsno conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first, we have to bring them to heel. (Clinton has since apologized for using the term and admitted parts of the 1994 bill were a mistake.)

The resurfacing of her books extract has dragged Clintons record on racial equality into the spotlight. Despite her reaching out to the black community during her 2008 and 2016 bids for the presidency, she actively supported and lobbied for her husband while more and more black people were sent to prison. Though Toni Morrison named Bill Clinton the countrys first black president, under his watch there was an 100:1 gram-to-gram sentencing disparity between people imprisoned for powdered cocaine possession and those imprisoned for crack cocaine. (At the time, a crack epidemic was sweeping Americas black community.)

In response to Jings tweets, Clintons supporters say she would still have been a better choice for president than Donald Trump. In 1973, the Justice Department sued Trump and his father for discriminating against potential tenants who were black. In 1989, ahead of the trial of the Central Park Fivea group of African-American men who were wrongfully accused of brutally assaulting a white woman Trump took out an advert in the New York Times calling on the state to bring back the death penalty. Muggers and murderers, he wrote, should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes.

Trump has also distanced himself from his past. He promised to send more people to prison to protect minority communities without acknowledging the huge racial disparities in the prison system or the need for police reform.

On Twitter, Sinyangwe concludes : 2016 was a choice between a white woman benefitting from black prison labor and a white man campaigning on sending black people to prison.

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Twitter Erupts Over News That Hillary Clinton Used Black Prison Labor While First Lady of Arkansas - Newsweek

Did Russia change my vote?

Mondays leak of a classified National Security Agency document detailing how the Kremlins military intelligence, the GRU, targeted election officials and breached some voter rolls brought back many Americans worst post-election fearsPutin changed their vote for Donald Trump.

At the same time, the dumped intelligence report offered some of the best confirmation of Russian meddling in the U.S. election, providing more evidence to tamp down the claims of President Trump and his legions that it was China or a guy in a basement that hacked the Democratic National Committee and many other current and former American officials.

The techniques targeting election officialsspam that redirects recipients to false email login pages yielding passwords to Russian hackersappear eerily familiar to those used by the GRU against many other U.S. targets in 2015 and 2016.

To the disappointment of Trumps biggest haters, the NSA leak provides no evidence that Russia changed any votes. And that makes sense, as Russian altering of the tally in favor of their preferred candidate Donald Trump would be sufficient justification for warone Russia would lose against the U.S.

The Kremlin sought instead to create the perception among Americans that the election may not be authentic in order to push their secondary election effort: Undermine the mandate of Hillary Clinton to govern, should she win.

The NSA report documents cyberespionage operations in August 2016. Putins original Active Measures plan of discrediting Hillary Clinton through strategic leaks of hacked secrets while promoting Donald Trump among American audiences worked to a point throughout the summer. Trumps supporters chanted Kremlin-created or promoted themes regarding Clintons lost emails, fictitious health problems, and alleged corruption.

Despite the success of Russias hacking-empowered influence efforts, polling showed a Trump campaign destined for defeat after the political party conventions of July 2016. So much so, the Kremlin sought an alternative, second tack to undermine American democracy by sowing chaos and conspiracy.

Starting in late summer and growing significantly into the October leadup to Election Day, the Kremlins pumping of Trump slowed a bit and was accompanied and outpaced by allegations of voter fraud and that the election was rigged.

If Putin couldnt get his preferred choice into the White House, he wanted to discredit Clinton and degrade the authenticity of democracy such that Americans believed their votes didnt count and the Democrats framed the election.

Then-candidate Trump echoed these allegations repeatedly and so frequently that when he did win in November, his rhetoric in many ways brought doubt to the authenticity of his own victory.

To help push along the voter-fraud conspiracy, Russia launched hacks in late summer against voter rolls, not so much voting machines, seeking to shake the confidence of democratic systems and support conspiracies of election manipulation.

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By the Kremlins calculations, if Clinton won, Trumps supporters outrage would then undermine Clintons mandate to govern, create chaos among political partisans, and might even mobilize anti-government and alternative-right groups that saw Trump as their savior.

Some will claim that Russia might be seeking voter rolls to determine how to influence certain segments of the electorate in favor of Trump, but American social-media accounts openly provide far richer data on voters preferences and vulnerabilities for influence. Just ask Jared Kushner, his data-analytics wunderkinds, and their partner, Cambridge Analytica.

Cambridge Analyticas primary backers, Robert and daughter Rebeka Mercer, simultaneously headed a pro-Trump PAC dubbed Make America Number 1, which was headed by White House counsel Kellyanne Conway. The PAC doled out $20 million in 2016and more to Cambridge Analytica than for any other expenditure. Trump White House Senior Adviser Steve Bannon sat on Cambridge Analyticas board while running operations at Breitbart before becoming Trumps campaign CEO.

Russia didnt need to scout voter rolls to influence them for Trump on Facebook; Cambridge Analytica performed that targeting on its own, delivering stories based on hacked materials to Trump votersdoing the Kremlins work for them.

As I noted in my recent testimony to Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and last October, Russias Active Measures cyber-playbook works best when paired with provocationsphysical actions undertaken by Kremlin agents that provide grains of truth for powering conspiracies.

Countries closer to Moscow receive greater volume and intensity in provocation to undermine democracy and power cyberinfluence. Russia allegedly changed the vote in Ukraine in 2014, a result narrowly caught and corrected before the final tally.

In America, it sought not to alter the tally, but to create the perception that its possibleand instill doubt among Americans in the process. Hacking of voter rolls rather than machines creates an impression in the voters psyches without provoking the U.S. into open conflict.

Corroborating evidence supporting the Kremlins alternate plan to prepare for undermining a Clinton 2016 victory exists. I noticed a shift in Kremlin messaging last October, when its overt news outlets, conspiratorial partner websites, and covert social-media personas pushed theories of widespread voter fraud and hacking.

Reuters recently reported that a Kremlin-backed think tank, the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, drafted in October and distributed in the same way, warned that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was likely to win the election.

For that reason, it argued, it was better for Russia to end its pro-Trump propaganda and instead intensify its messaging about voter fraud to undermine the U.S. electoral systems legitimacy and damage Clintons reputation in an effort to undermine her presidency, Reuters Ned Parker, Jonathan Landay, and John Walcott wrote.

The ex-MI6 agent Chris Steeles dossier echoes these sentiments, noting from pages 28 to 31 that the Russians were having buyers remorse with Trump and were reorienting their campaigns to achieve their objectives should Clinton win.

In total, Russias Active Measures sought to destroy faith in democracy even more than it wanted to elect Trump. And theres no better symbol of democracy to attack than the purity of elections.

Americans have the luxury to hear the testimony of DNI Coates, NSA Director Admiral Rogers and Acting FBI Director McCabe on Wednesday. The recently released document will likely come up during Senate Select Committee questioning. Sen. Mark Warner already seems to be suggesting this classified doc is just the tip of the Russia meddling iceberg.

For all Americans, I hope we get more answers than questions after the next two days hearings.

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Russia's Last-Minute Hacking Was Meant to Burn President Hillary - Daily Beast

Hillary Clinton at the 2017 Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California

With the 2016 presidential election far in the rear-view mirror, failed candidate Hillary Clinton is now breaking down in public, with her seemingly endless list of excuses of why she lost to Republican Donald Trump, says radio host Rush Limbaugh.

Shes having a breakdown right before our eyes, Limbaugh said on his Wednesday broadcast.

Hillary Clinton is falling apart before our very eyes. And its important to note this because Hillary Clinton has been presented to us as the smartest woman in the world, the toughest woman in the world, the woman who could have been president if she had not hitched her wagon to that loser [Bill] Clinton.

And now whats happened to her? She is delirious. She cannot live in reality. She cannot accept whats happening. She has been rejected. This is the most-cheated-on woman in America, including by her own party.

Like the reporting you see here? Sign up for free news alerts from WND.com, Americas independent news network.

The 2016 Democratic nominee recently criticized her own political party, claiming she inherited nothing from the Democratic National Committee for the general campaign.

I mean it was bankrupt, it was on the verge of insolvency, its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong. I had to inject money into it, Clinton told the 2017 Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, last week.

Hillary Clinton collapses while being carried into a van in New York City on Sept. 11, 2016

Limbaugh says if anyone was owed something by a political party, it was Mrs. Clinton.

Hillary Clinton singlehandedly saved her husbands administration, Limbaugh explained. I dont care if she did it for selfish reasons. I dont care if she did it for calculating reasons that would say that I have to do this to become president myself. She still did it. She ate the excrement sandwich that being married to that guy was.

In her mind, her party abandoned her, the Democratic National Committee abandoned her, even though they worked with her to rig the primary, her money people abandoned her, nobody helped her, everybody left her and hung her out to dry. She couldnt trust anybody. Shes dumping on everybody that worked on her campaign except for Huma [Abedin], and its all happening in public. Shes blaming 19 different things and people for her loss including are you ready? a thousand Russian agents in Macedonia.

Hillary has also blamed former FBI Director James Comey, WikiLeaks, fake news and misogyny for her election loss.

Limbaugh noted Mrs. Clinton has had a lifetime of hype as the best, as the smartest, as the most entitled. Shes living in this fantasy world.

Rush Limbaugh

In her mind, you dont know how much she actually accepts and how much she lies to herself, but regardless what shes telling herself, the end result is loss, loss, loss. Humiliating defeat. Its got to be hard psychologically when you measure that against what she expected, what everybody promised her, what she assumed. You know in her private moments, in two different campaigns, shes actually imagining being in the Oval Office with herself behind that desk.

In the end, Limbaugh sounded like he had some empathy for Hillary, saying, I defy any of you to put yourself in her situation and not be psychologically ripped to shreds.

Follow Joe Kovacs on Twitter @JoeKovacsNews

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Rush Limbaugh: Hillary 'falling apart before our very eyes' - WND.com

Former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, speaking Monday in Baltimore to an organization that provides leadership training to African-American students, said the world would benefit from "steady, determined leadership" in response to the recent terror attacks in the United Kingdom.

Without mentioning President Donald J. Trump by name, or addressing his policies directly, Clinton pointedly said it was leaders overseas including London Mayor Sadiq Khan who were reacting to those events with poise and resolve. Trump criticized Khan in social media postings after the attack Saturday that left seven dead and dozens injured.

"It's a time for steady, determined leadership, like we are seeing from local authorities in London, including the mayor of London," Clinton said at the fundraiser in Fells Point for the Elijah Cummings Youth Program in Israel. "This is not a time to lash out, to incite fear or to use tragedy and terror for political gain.

"Normally this would go without saying, but we are not living in normal times."

Clinton's address her first in Baltimore since she made a campaign stop in the city last year was less political, and less focused on the election, than several of her more recent speeches. Much of her 15-minute address centered on the group itself, named after Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Baltimore and developed to strengthen relationships between the African American and Jewish communities.

The program provides leadership and public service training as well as a trip to Israel for a dozen Baltimore students every year. It is a 19-year-old collaboration between the Democratic congressman and the Baltimore Jewish Council.

"It has never been more important for young Americans to see themselves as part of a global community," Clinton told a sold-out crowd at the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park. "This program's mission of spreading tolerance is more urgent than ever."

Still, as she spoke in a city and state that overwhelmingly supported her candidacy last year, Clinton took a number of subtle swipes at the man who won the national election.

"I'm asked quite often these days, what can we do? And the answer is as varied as the questioners," Clinton said. "There are so many ways for us to reach out, bring people together, set some common goals and work toward achieving them, to help build that brighter future for generations to come and, yes, for building leaders by building bridges, not walls."

A White House spokesman and the chairman of the Maryland Republican Party did not respond to requests for comment.

Cummings, who underwent what aides described as minimally invasive heart surgery on May 24, did not attend the event and instead appeared in a recorded video message to introduce Clinton. Wearing a blue and white dress shirt, Cummings appeared healthy and spoke in his usual deep voice and cadence.

"I had to get a tune up," Cummings joked. "Feeling good."

Clinton's remarks about the attack in London followed an unusual exchange between the president and the mayor of that city. Trump posted Sunday on Twitter that: "At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is 'no reason to be alarmed!'"

The mayor appeared to be making that comment in the context of an increased police presence following the attack. "Londoners will see an increased police presence today and over the course of the next few days," Khan said. "There's no reason to be alarmed."

Asked about the exchange Monday, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders blamed the media, which she suggested had misinterpreted the mayor's remarks.

"I think that the point is, there is a reason to be alarmed," she said. "We have constant attacks going on not just there but across the globe, and we have to start putting national security and global security at an all-time high."

Direct discussion of the election was absent from Clinton's address on Monday. Since reemerging into public view this spring, she has blamed Russian interference and ousted FBI director James Comey for contributing to Trump's win.

john.fritze@baltsun.com

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Speaking in Baltimore, Hillary Clinton praises London mayor for leadership following attack - Baltimore Sun