Hillary Clinton: "Reply All" to E-Mailing It In

Official portrait of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In politics, as in anything else, your name is your brand.  It can be a blessing or a curse, especially if you are part of a family dynasty that's had a mixed record of public service and has had trouble escaping scandal (See:  the Bushes and the Kennedys).

Take Hillary Clinton, who has yet to announce her intentions about running for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, though most assume it's forthcoming.  We've known Clinton as a First Lady to her two-term president husband.  She's been a U.S. Senator, a Secretary of State, and a past presidential candidate.  An impressive resume, no?

But there have also been those missteps that put doubt in people's minds that Clinton could handle the most important job in the world (beyond answering that 3 a.m. phone call), which is usually planted by Republicans who have no use for her except as a punching bag for their supporters.

During the White House years, it was Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky, the ones that came close to torpedoing husband Bill's presidency.  When Clinton was Secretary of State, it was the terrorist attack at Benghazi and her seemingly nonchalant reaction to it, which got the GOP's collective undies in a bunch that persists to this day.

This time around, it's for something else Clinton did while she was at the State Department.  She had a private e-mail account on her own server instead of using the government's.  Out of the more than 60,000 messages she says she created, half of them that were deemed unimportant were deleted.

People do dumb things.  Downplaying the seriousness of your actions is one of them.  For Clinton, who said she used her own account for the sake of convenience, she must have forgotten that most people use at least two e-mail accounts, one for personal use and the other for business.  For obvious reasons, the business account should be the most secure one in Clinton's former line of work. 

Isn't it also possible that, with all the concern about the privacy of the Internet, Clinton's making a point about the vulnerability of government communications and how they could easily be hacked?

Clinton is the prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic nomination, should she decide to run.  So what happens if, for some reason, she doesn't?  The Democrats, who seem to have put all their eggs in Clinton's basket, seriously need a Plan B because right now they don't really have one.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts?  A popular choice, but she's made too many enemies on Wall Street to be a viable candidate.  Joe Biden?  Sure, he's Vice President.  But he's also a loose cannon.  Maybe they could persuade Michelle Obama to run?

If Hillary Clinton wants to be the first elected female President, she has to stop making these stupid mistakes that do nothing but earn GOP ridicule and prompts everyone else to question her judgement.  Owning up to them is a start.  Because without her, the Democrats are in big trouble for 2016.

Random Thoughts 2015, Volume 1

Bill O'Reilly at the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia, September 30, 2010 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Hillary Clinton used a private e-mail account when she was Secretary of State.  What does this tell us about how the government handles its e-mails?

The Federal Communications Commission declares the Internet to be a utility and sides with net neutrality, which means that the Comcasts of the world can't push its favorite sites onto a faster lane than everyone else.  Be careful what you wish for, because this is the FCC we're talking about.

The same Republican Congress that held the Department of Homeland Security's budget hostage saw no problem in inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before a joint session, without the White House's blessing.  Putting politics before public safety is just par for the course for these guys.

Groups who threaten to blow up civilian targets such as shopping malls, even if they're just bluffing, are enough to keep many potential customers at home.  Same goes for those who believe their Second Amendment rights allow them to carry weapons that have more firepower than the police has, defending themselves against those who are likely to be wearing their bombs.

President Obama has vetoed the Keystone XL oil pipeline.  So which would you rather have?  A pipeline drawing oil from Canada that might rupture and cause untold environmental damage?  Or having oil delivered from North Dakota on aging trains and rail lines, causing explosions resulting in deaths and even more environmental damage?  But hey, anything to ensure more jobs and cheaper gas prices, right?

Bill O'Reilly is not going to lose his TV job just because his telling of how he covered the Falkland Islands War of 1982 as a CBS correspondent differed from anyone else's.  O'Reilly works for Fox News, a trusted source for Republicans and anyone else who doesn't care about being informed.  To paraphrase an old ad slogan:  You expect less from Fox News.  And you get it.

In a new series of promos for WCCO-TV, anchors Frank Vascellaro and Amelia Santaniello sound like they're claiming their station to be the King of Local News.  They're more like court jesters.

We don't know if Dick Chapman, the former WCCO-AM personality who recently passed away, was the first local media person to pronounce the name of Bemidji, Minnesota as "BER-midji" instead of  "BEM-idji".  But now that we're hearing some local media yokels who didn't originally come from the Gopher State pronounce Bemidji the Chapman way, this really needs to stop because it's annoying as hell.  What has Bemidji done to deserve this?

A Little League baseball team from Chicago is stripped of its U.S. championship because they used players from outside its area.  A Minnesota high school won a dance team championship despite allegations of their plagiarizing the moves of another team in Utah, while their opponents stood to one side and refused to accept their consolation trophies.  We lay blame on the adults for manipulating the kids into situations like these.  But how much of it is the kids' fault, and why are they never blamed?  Is that how they think they can get away with anything in life, including murder?

Leonard Nimoy (1931-2015) played a pointy-eared scientist from a distant planet on a celebrated science-fiction TV series, and it defined him for the rest of his life.  Fortunately, Nimoy was talented enough to succeed in other forms of acting and directing so that he could live long and prosper on this planet without always being tagged as the guy with the pointy ears.  Now he belongs in another dimension.