Another 1,600 Pages of Hillary Clinton Email

The State Department made another Friday night document dump of Hillary Clinton emails, this time to the Benghazi Select Committee. You may browse them in the virtual FOIA reading room.

Most Eyebrow-Raising Headline of the Week

"Coffee icon gets buried in espresso maker" - New York Post

 

Smells Like Chavismo Spirit

Deodorant rationing in Venezuela - one to a customer

Our friends in Venezuela have not done at all well under the socialist regime of Hugo Chavez and his successor. From being a wealthy oil state with little poverty 17 years ago, Venezuela's economy has gone steadily downhill until today, according to the World Bank, it has negative economic growth, massive public debt, 32 percent of the population in poverty, and 62 percent inflation, the highest rate in South America. It was into that economic death spiral even before the recent drop in oil prices.

Now, Venezuela's down and dirty socialism is getting personal, as Fox News Latino reports. Beauty-Obsessed Venezuelans Dealing With Another Shortage: Personal Hygiene Products:

Venezuela, a country that takes great pride in its looks, is dealing with an issue that has the country in a major tizzy – shortages in beauty products. That means women and men so accustomed to looking their best are now having to do without shampoo, cosmetics and, hold your breath, even deodorant.

The time is ripe for recalling what our foremost socialist here in the USA, Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent, Vermont Ben & Jerry Land), famously told CNBC:

You can't just continue growth for the sake of growth in a world in which we are struggling with climate change and all kinds of environmental problems. All right? You don't necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country. I don't think the media appreciates the kind of stress that ordinary Americans are working on.

BTW, how many flavors does Ben & Jerry's need to sell? We don't necessarily need 23 of those, either. Would Vermonters be better off if they had only vanilla? I'm just wondering.

Bernie's whole more-consumer-goods-equals-more-hungry-children idea didn't make sense in the first place, given all the actual economic experience to the contrary. But now we have the example of Venezuela, the foremost socialist experiment in the Americas, where poverty is growing right along with a loss of choice - or even availability - of deodorant.

"Growth for the sake of growth" would sound, and smell, pretty good to Venezuelans, I think. 

Most Eyebrow-Raising Headline of the Week

"Due to extreme temperatures and high winds the Central Park Ice Festival scheduled for this Saturday, February 13 will be cancelled" - Central Park Conservancy

Why There Are Almost No Girls Named Hillary

Doesn't anyone name their baby girls "Hillary" anymore? The evidence is inconclusive for several reasons, such as that popular names for children run in generational cycles, however, it does appear that First Lady Hillary Clinton put off many parents from naming their girls Hillary. Look at the steep drop off that coincides with the start of the Bill Clinton administration. It also looks like there was a bad Hillary aftertaste that has remained to the present day.

The generational cycles in children's names are quite pronounced, by the way. A college professor friend tells me she is always amused by the historical echoes she sees in the names of new Freshmen. Twenty years after the Woodstock generation, classes were full of students with names like Sunshine and Freedom. Then, there were waves of Yuppies' kids with corporate-friendly names. And there are always names of twenty year-gone movie stars, and so on.

I don't think all that many parents are inspired enough by politicians to name their kids after them. But, looking at that chart, I can believe that HRC spoiled the name for many parents who would otherwise have gone with Hillary. Truly, HRC has a likability problem, which is something that came up the last time she ran in a New Hampshire primary.



Thank you WaPo Wonkblog for today's story on how the Clintons ruined the name ‘Hillary’ for new parents.

A Mildly Interesting Disruption at John Kerry's Press Conference in Rome

There's not much to see here, but since an Italian activist of the No-War Network Roma went to the trouble of staging a scene and getting arrested, and an Iranian news agency recorded it an put in on YouTube for us to see, why not do so? Anyway, I hadn't seen anything about the incident in our local news media, so, kudos to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting people.

SecState Kerry was in Rome this week to meet with Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni regarding the coalition against ISIS. At a press conference on February 2, one of the attendees - Marinella Correggia, of the No-War Network - started toward Kerry while shouting and waving a poster. Local police collared her at once.

Kerry's protective detail kept a low profile. I think I heard an American voice saying "whoa, whoa, whoa!" when the pinko started waving her poster, but it was the Italians who pounced on her.  

All's well that ends well.

Stop Replying to All, Our In-Boxes Are Full

The National Counterterrorism Center puts out a weekly newsletter aimed at domestic law enforcement agencies and anyone else with an interest in non-classified news articles about terrorism. It's a modest enough thing, or at least it was until this week when someone in the Seattle area 'replied all' to the distribution list. She was answered by another 'reply all' from Nebraska, which was followed by some out-of-office messages, again 'to all.' Then she replied to all again to withdraw the first message, and so on, and so forth, until today the cyber floodgates were opened and hundreds of auto messages started going out to thousands of people on the newsletter's distribution list.

By noon today I'd received over 500 messages from people asking the NCTC to remove them from the newsletter distribution list, or from people replying 'to all' to tell other people to stop replying to all, or from NCTC advising me of non-deliverable messages. Finally, I set up an email rule to send any more messages to my deleted folder.

I just hope this is really a fiendishly clever ISIS denial of services attack on the NCTC. That would be less alarming than the obvious explanation, i.e., that thousands of people in Homeland Security intelligence fusion centers from sea to shining sea are dumb enough to keep replying to all when they try to get out of this email storm.