We are ready for debate 3. Tonight is “Salsa Wednesday”, so I will be out dancing. I’m counting on a few of you to post comments highlighting the more important outbursts, body language, or… whatever.
With luck both HRC and Trump will both be struck by bolts of lightening hurled by Thor, or Zeus or whoever is your preferred wielder of lightening bolts. After which, both will be temporarily incapacitated and find they need to give up running for Pres. leaving their VPs to duke it out. If that happens, please do report details about exactly how the lightening bolt was hurled and by whom. Also, mention if the energy was the output of an ECAT, perhaps one funded by Putin.
Ok. That’s mean. I shouldn’t wish someone gets struck by a bolt of lightening. But tell me you aren’t wishing nearly the same thing?
Open thread.
Turns out Jim is going to watch the cubs. So we are here.
My son is watching the debate at my house as part of his polysci course. So I’m watching.
Here’s a WaPo article that I think is a decent start at the do’s and don’ts for Trump:
What Donald Trump should do — and not do — in tonight’s debate
To echo what I said, on that comment thread, I think he needs to focus on issues where he can “move the dial”, and not just the ones where he feeds his most ardent followers more red meat. I think his strongest issues are immigration, trade and the economy.
I think these are all issues the Democrats as a party are vulnerable on.
I would say Trump’s weakest issues are those which are “priced into Clinton’s stock” or which open up a bigger vulnerability in Trump. These are the emails (already “priced into stock”, talking about them only makes Trump look negative and vitriolic, does nothing to help sell himself), Clinton’s foundation (Trump’s is a far, far worse mess), Clinton’s spouse (again priced into stock for Clinton so bringing this up can only hurt Trump, given recent allegations), sexual misconduct (Bill isn’t running, Trump is, Bill’s indiscretions are “stale news”, Trump’s are not), nor Obamacare (this is a polarized issue… the people who like it, really like it.. you lose as many as you gain so the dial stays fixed).
If Clinton successfully baits him again and he gets off message, game is over. Unless she has a stroke or something, of course.
Good luck to your Cubs! Would be nice to see a CLE/CHI world series.
Alright! Getting all setup here at hockey practice where I can take the pulse of the people in real time as Alabama watches their hopes go down the toilet.
Wonder what the bandwidth is going to be like. There are big screen TV’s here, but they’re playing some adult swim cartoon; Aqua Teen Hunger Force, if I’m not mistaken.
Well, better see how streaming looks.
My biggest question in tonight’s boxing match is whether the ref is up to it, not just fair, but actually able to maintain control.
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The contest so far is betwen talk-dirty and play-dirty. The first is easier to show, the second is more important.
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I’m glad to see that Steyn is back.
Re: Trump Tactics
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I think his biggest mistake (almost certainly part of his makeup) is to raise weird/unfounded issues (the election is rigged), which causes the press (a significant part of the public follows the legacy press — I haven’t watched a TV news program for 2 or 3 years) to focus on him and not Clinton. Clinton is vulnerable in many ways, but if everyone is talking about him, then she gets off the hook. Some of the wikileaks stuff is really bad, but no one is talking about it because everyone talks about off the cuff issues that Trump raises.
Personally, I think he was mortally wounded by the groping tape, but a small part of me thinks that this election is so weird that maybe the polling is not correct. I really doubt that I will watch the debate.
JD
Also, I think there is a very good chance that climate change will be raised and that the moderator (during the debate) and so called fact checkers (will later say) that Trump is off his rocker to question climate change and the proposed remedies. From the Left’s standpoint, based upon its superficial scientific understanding, this is a perfect issue to frame Trump as a flat earther nut-case.
JD
Well, real time streaming isn’t going to be an option here, but I can listen to it at tunein.com\CNN. Anybody watching, please post remarks if something visually interesting happens.
Another way to look at the Clinton Foundation might be to assume honesty on the Clintons’ part. They look at the international community and see that a lot of the participants assume that everything is corrupt and that bribes are required. So the Clintons set up a foundation — like a honeypot. The corrupt are directed to make their contributions to the foundation. They do, and the foundation uses the money for worthy purposes – which it apparently actually does, and the bribers seem to get nothing more for their money than a little better access, they don’t get anything naughty.
I suppose this may be a little hard for many of the folks here to swallow – and this theory may be completely nuts – but I don’t think it is totally improbable.
Ate lunch today with old friend attorney who I hadn’t seen for a couple of years. He agreed with me that the bleaching of Hillary’s email server drives a day after she received the subpoena would never go un-prosecuted had she been anyone else. It defies belief that she could have received it and not called to find out if they had indeed been destroyed. She or Cheryl Mills. They were likely told that the drives had not been destroyed and then should have ordered that they be preserved — but they didn’t.
home again, zero Matthew damage , not even power interruption. hope all the rest of you who were exposed did ok.
Hurray! The good folks at the IcePlex agreed to put it on one of the TV’s. There are a couple of women here watching / listening as well. Should be interesting to see their reaction here in the heart of Trump territory.
Anyways, cancel/ignore my request for feedback on visually interesting things.
You’re a good man J Ferguson. Your suggestion reflects that you’re probably a pretty decent guy at the core. I’ll make a special point of spending a few hours making the best effort this partisan, cynical mind of mine can manage to review what I think I know about the Clinton’s in the most charitable light I can, sometime between now and when I vote. Not that my vote will make a difference; I’m in the inverse [strike, replace with opposite] of Lucia’s situation.
The cat is eating treats. I’m on the couch….. 5 minutes and counting.
I don’t seem to see seats up there on the stage.
The audience has promised to remain silent…. heh.
She doesn’t like citizens united. That’s one of the reasons I can’t stand her. Translation: She’s planning to do her best to get people in place to ignore what the constitution says.
Hillary didn’t really speak to the ‘living document’ vrs ‘what the founders said’ question. Sokay, think we know her position on that one.
“She’s planning to do her best to get people in place to ignore what the constitution says.”
And she is trying not to sound too much like that.
I wish Trump would talk about upholding the first amendment rather than just the second.
Trump is babbling.
Trump does not sound like a conventional rehearsed politician.
She respects the 2nd amendment. She just wants to make it impossible for people to buy a gun.
She doesn’t like the way the court applied Heller ‘cuz it prevented people from preventing people from having guns.
Wow Trump, you just got a softball. Knock it out. How will you protect the second amendment.
“Sensible common sense regulations”. Which in Heller pretty much meant you can own a gun… but pretty much can’t load it.
Trump’ll appoint prolife judges. Blech…
FINALLY. Got something out that answers the question.
Heh. An aside: Both women behind me are pretty obviously Hillary supporters.
An honest fact checker could have a field day with Clinton’s gun comments.
Yeah. blech.
MIkeM,
Yes. Heller was thrown out because it pretty much made it illegal to have a functional weapon in your home. And the argument why the law was ok was that the 2nd amendment doesn’t apply to DC.
So: yeah…. being for the law Heller through out is being againts the 2nd amendment.
He should have called ninth month partial birth abortion murder. That’s the only way it’s the government’s business.
How many times can he say “we need strong borders”?
Okay. Trump did not convince me at all that he believed what he was saying on 2cnd Amendment or Roe-v-Wade. Immigration – at least he sounds like he has something to say he seems to believe in.
mark bofill,
I agree. Now that we are on to something that is actually the president’s job, he sounds much better.
Everything she says is so vague…. That said she can get away with it.
Hillary is kicking Trump’s butt. He’s not making his case nearly as well as Hillary is making hers.
Now Hillary is babbling.
Mark bofill,
You’re right they aren’t sitting. The WGN intro people said they’d be sitting.
Is she making this up about Trump using undocumented workers to build Trump Tower?
Sure, Hillary’s stuff was vague. But ‘tearing families apart’ and ’rounding people up, home to home, school to school’ – that’s powerful imagery, powerful rhetoric. Points scored with no answer.
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Trump needs to animate a little more. He is trying to appear controlled and presidential, but it’s too low key. Needs to be more dynamic.
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Improving a little.
Wallace is pressing her. Brought up how much she gets paid for speeches.
And the Democrats, including Clinton, I think, killed Bush’s proposal.
WOW! He went there. WikiLeaks enters the ring!
Trump– Say “So says the woman who kept secure documents on a server in her bathroom!”
Heh. Admit and condemn that the Russians are doing this.
No one knows that the Russians are involved.
Has Trump ever said anything this paranoid?
Good comeback by Trump.
Good. Finish on the borders Trump before you move on.
Trump as a puppet? So says Wall Street’s puppet.
Wallace is doing pretty well keeping them in line.
You’re right Lucia. He’s missing opportunities to make Hillary appear laughable while he flails. Your answer would have been devastating.
Good clarification by Wallace. Good response by Trump. But should have raised foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation.
Whoever or whatever convinced Trump to walk softly and defensively in this debate is destroying his last good chance to make a case.
Next topic: The economy!
Economy. Trump, doesn’t get any better than this. Get your head out of your butt here.
Biggest jobs programs. Jobs in clean energy.
College debt free is probably a catastrophe waiting to happen.
More government spending, more regulations, more free stuff, means more jobs. Yeah, right.
Well. That’s that.
He’s not even talking about the economy.
What is wrong with the man.
He is changing to a different topic, not to his advantage.
He’s skipping the opportunity to talk about what he’ll do for the economy. Oh… he’s now at least going back to issues of economy. (He’ll make great trade deals. Renegotiate NAFTA.)
Finally! talk forever to say ‘renegotiate nafta’. Anything else?
It all comes in a rush at the end.
Is her mocking smile going to hurt her?
She claims she is not going to raise taxes on anyone making $2??,000 or less. (So how is she going to pay for the jobs program or the free college?)
My son was listening to the debate. Overheard immigration arguments. Trump said 2 stupid things. 1. Obama deported millions. In reality Obama is not enforcing the law and deporting people who are illegally here unless they commit a very serious crime. He almost certainly is using the inaccurate Pew report which equates border patrol apprehensions with deportations. 2. He said illegal entrants commit crimes. Undoubtedly, they do, but I doubt they commit them at a higher rate than do American citizens.
….
Why is it so hard to simply state that we can’t take everyone who wants to come and have to have secure borders?
JD
Points out her plan is similar to Obama stimulus plan. Is her plan is bigger better Obama stimulus.
I am honestly beginning to believe that Trump decided not to prepare, or even get a good night’s sleep, because he thought Wallace would take on Hillary for him.
Yes. Let’s see where this goes. Good lord Trump, she has just praised Obama’s handling with the stimulus, she’s associated with his position. Counterattack with the anemic recovery and the stagnant growth!
Good. There. Growth and jobs in the toilet.
Heh. She tried to answer your rhetorical question Trump, gotta be careful with those.
Trump just said what I had been thinking. We haven’t been enforcing, but now I will. Right.
You know someone has no argument when they decree someone’s claim has been debunked giving no details of in what way the claim is wrong.
All talk, no accomplishment.
Counterattack. Good. Take a look at Syria, take a look at Iraq.
Trump hit that one out of the park.
Addressing stories… says debunked. So both used that now. 🙂
Again, good. Get off the subject of the women, get back on to the attack about hired DNC thugs.
[Hockey’s over. Brief intermission for me while I drive me and my kid home.]
He’s blaming campaign for the women who came forward. Honestly not enough time before vote for use to really, really know. So this will work with some; not with others.
Clear denial. Maybe he is lying, but it lets people believe him, unlike Hillary’s deflections.
Oh heavens… she just drones on like someone giving a boring sermon they’ve given soooo many times before.
Nice pivot by Trump.
Her side of that question was supposed to be about Bill’s behavior with women. She dodged that pretty well.
Good catch TerryMN. But the emails are more powerful.
Hilary says Trump is divisive: Pot, kettle black.
Wallace is going to ask wikileaks and the Clinton Foundation.
Wallace is easily the best moderator yet.
She’s avoiding Wallaces question about pay for play.
So I guess pay-for-play is OK is some of the money is done for good?
Wallace is the best.
Wallace is laughing…
Rigged election topic.
Raising good points, but should have said plainly that he will accept the result.
Mosel….
The Dems only accepted the outcome in 2000 after SCOTUS said they had to.
She won’t put American boots on the ground as occupying force.
Mike M: “The Dems only accepted the outcome in 2000 after SCOTUS said they had to.”
and many still don’t accept it now.
JD
So… we’ll press on w/o boots on the ground? Is that what she means.? ( I know she can’t answer.)
She’s going after the Russians. She’s going to prevent ‘terrorists’ in the US from buying guns.
Clinton did make a very good and fair point about Trump always saying that if he doesn’t win the system is rigged even with respect to Emmy awards. I thought that was really funny.
JD
You’re 2 minutes are up.
JD Ohio,
Absolutely. He says everything is rigged.
If she takes credit for killing Bin Laden again I may puke.
Who is the “we” that Hillary says will invade Syria if we won’t be putting boots on the ground?
Mike M.
Perhaps drones?
Well… presumably not drones. That would violate a no-fly zone.
So is she going to answer the questions: What does she do if they violate?
Heh. Hillary pussies out. Would you shoot down russian planes? Hillary’s answer – we could negotiate something.
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Sure – you’re not going to let anybody in who’s going to be a problem. SNORT.
The threat is people from Queens?
She’ll remember the poor little boy with blood on his face.
Edit: Response to Lucia “So is she going to answer the questions: What does she do if they violate?”
The national debt. Should be interesting.
Good answer! You can’t solve for the debt without increasing growth.
He’s going to create jobs. GDP will rise 4% or more…
Really, I have no idea how he is going to do this.
Magical trade deals Lucia. Magical trade deals. Heh.
MikeM
My guess is she doesn’t bomb. She just ways “whoops! Well… at least we negotiated deal. Time to go back and negotiate another one.”
Does anyone believe she doesn’t add a penny to the national debt while buying all this stuff? Not me!
When did she say Trump ran that ad? 1980?
Hillary doesn’t add a penny to the debt. That’s pretty much admitting it, yep. She’ll ignore it.
We might reach 25 trillion under her administration. At what point will this trigger a crisis I wonder. Can we have 50 trillion, 70 trillion debt? I don’t know.
[Edit: Lucia, believe it? nope, somehow I think I’ve heard that someplace before…]
He admits he disagreed with Reagan. Ok. I’m not seeing that as a sin.
Not discussing medicare/aid. Pivoting to Obamacare.
Grow the economy to support entitlements, repeal and replace Obamacare. I think that’s at least a B+ answer. [Edit yup, dodging the medicare / medicaid issue.]
Mark— Sure. He wants to talk about what he wants to talk about.
She’ll raise the FICA tax, but she will only tax the wealthy. Huh?
Emphasizing wellness may extend life. It does NOT get costs down.
Reaching out to all of us Hillary. I’m not feeling it. Sounds like Obama’s post partisan thing to me. Hah, stand against corporations! Is that a public or a private position dear.
He wasn’t as good as last time, but he warmed up eventually. It wasn’t what I was hoping for. Trump is Trump, I just have to accept that.
What do you guys think?
I think Trump won that, after a slow start.
It’s over.
Wallace was a good moderator. Actually, this wasn’t a bad debate. (Still wish Thor had taken them both out with Thunderbolts.)
MikeM,
We’ll have to wait for the polls. The ones with huminz.
I didn’t get a sense of a clear winner, so that probably means Hillary did in the polls.
I’d like to clarify something I mentioned earlier. I do not support the overturning of Roe vrs Wade. Not what I’m looking for in the next SCOTUS pick. Somehow I doubt they will chose to hear such a case, but perhaps I’m wrong about that and down the road they will.
But what I was really trying to get at earlier was this. If you’re going to ‘go there’ and say ‘pro-life’, you’d better be prepared to call abortion murder, because that’s the only moral high ground to be had in that fight. Otherwise, what Hillary said – it’s just the government interfering in something it has no business interfering in.
But why on earth did Trump go there? [real question] I thought he was after undecided voters. I wouldn’t have thought that was the way to do it.
mark bofill: “If you’re going to ‘go there’ and say ‘pro-life’, you’d better be prepared to call abortion murder, because that’s the only moral high ground to be had in that fight.”
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But that is really only the moral high ground if you support charging the would be mother as accessory to murder. There is no way to make it simple.
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The biggest problem with Hillary’s position (no restrictions, even for late term) is exactly what Trump said.
mark bofill
Either (a) it’s what he really thinks or (b) he thinks he needs evangelicals. I lean toward (a).
MikeM,
Indeed. He shouldn’t have gone there. Roe-v-Wade is extremely dangerous ground.
Thanks Lucia. I wondered if he was sincere about that and gun control, but maybe I read it wrong.
That said: Actually, there is a constitutional argument that the bill of rights has been stretched beyond it’s meaning with ROE v. Wade and a number of other cases. In one believes that, they the matter should go to the states. So he may believe that. But that’s not quite what he said– he said he would appoint pro-life justices. That’s not a constitutional interpretation argument.
After the portions, I heard, I am resigned to 4 very bad years. Just have to get into my own personal bunker and tough it out. If it gets intolerably bad, I have the right to become a dual citizen of Italy.
JD
Well, it’s over at last. Whew. The ordeal is done.
Thanks for providing the thread and commentary Lucia! [uhmm, not saying I’m going to duck out of the conversation. Mostly that I want to say Thanks before I forget. 🙂 ]
MikeM, the liberals’ plan on Social Security for decades has been to eliminate the cap on the FICA tax, effectively raising the top income tax rate by either 6.25% or 12.5%, with all the money placed in Social Security accounting. Currently the tax only applies to about 90k or so.
Lucia wrote: “he would appoint pro-life justices. That’s not a constitutional interpretation argument.”
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Yes, it is a constitutional argument. Pro-life justices will not ban abortion, they just won’t say that it is in the constitution. That would leave it to the states.
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I think Trump said what he did to reach out to evangelicals who are normally solid Republican but have a problem with Trump. But he did not go all abortion-is-murder because he does not want to scare moderates. Probably the best that could be done on that.
Lucia, you say you don’t think Trump believes what he is saying on 2nd amendment and abortion, then you answer with option a) that it is what he believes.
I think your first answer might be right, but Trump has reinforced what I said many months ago, that he has said more in favor of gun rights and against abortion than Romney or McCain. He has now done that in a general election, outdoing both W and Dole as well.
Cubs 10-2!! (Not over.)
JD: “resigned to 4 very bad years.”
Four bad years from Trump will be a recoverable error. Four years of Hillary might not be.
MIkeM,
If the cubs win, anything is possible. Even my dream that Thor would strike both HRC and Trump could come true.
First debate was a strategic win for Trump, but tactically poor. Second debate was great on both counts. This debate was strategically poor but a tactical win. If this had been the first debate, it would have been excellent, even more reassuring that he is not scary than the first debate, however now his big problem is women voters, and it’s not clear he did much to counter that. I think this was a tactical win, because the opening segments couldn’t have been scripted better by the Trump campaign with regards to winning Pennsylvania.
MikeN wrote: “the liberals’ plan on Social Security for decades has been to eliminate the cap on the FICA tax, effectively raising the top income tax rate by either 6.25% or 12.5%, with all the money placed in Social Security accounting. Currently the tax only applies to about 90k or so.”
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Yes, they want to raise the cap. Not sure about eliminating it and not sure that they don’t want to spend the money on other things Even so, it won’t matter to the very rich since FICA only applies to earned income. But my point was that $90K is less than $200K, so Hillary is lying when she says she won’t raise taxes on people making less than $200K.
Lucia: Cubs 10 –2
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Indians beat Toronto 4 games to 1. If the Indians meet the Cubs in the World Series that would be amazing. Indians manager Francona has been in 2 World Series and never lost a game.
JD
MikeN,
I thought that was me who didn’t think Trump was sincere about abortion and 2nd amendment. But maybe I’m wrong. [Edit: I mean, I’m quite sure I’m not wrong about my thinking that. I might be wrong about what Lucia thinks. There. Been a long day, clearly. :)]
Lucia,
LOL
Lucia wrote: “If the cubs win, anything is possible. Even my dream that Thor would strike both HRC and Trump could come true.”
Now I am REALLY rooting for the Cubs!
mark bofill,
I could be wrong about what Trump thinks. It’s just a gut feeling thing. My gut isn’t always right.
Mark, that makes more sense. It struck me as strange he said ‘ripped from the womb’, instead of ‘ripped to pieces’. What he said is just a C-section. Be hilarious if he was trying to call Hillary Lady Macbeth.
MikeM
No. All Trump is saying justices interpret the constitutions to fit their views. He’ll appoints ones whose views are pro-life and that will be the reason they don’t think it’s in the constitution.
That’s not an argument about what the constitution really says or means.
I know there are people who make the argument it’s not in the constitution. But if someone really has a method of constitutional interpretation and applies it whether they are pro-life or pro-choice themselves doesn’t matter. What matters is what the constitution says and means.
I suppose you all knew that Hillary had no concept of why we might have a constitution. I didn’t realize it until tonight. She has NO IDEA why we have those words. Apparently her view is that the Supreme Court is a debating club to resolve what might seem best to a majority at the time, regardless of whether it might or might not fit.
She couldn’t even bring herself to respect the thought and wisdom of it. God, if it was almost anyone but TRUMP.
And while we’re at it with Citizens United, If i haven’t completely missed the point it seems to have permitted a lot of people to spend a whole lot of money on Jeb Bush’s campaign without measurable result. I thought that demonstrated pretty clearly that money alone couldn’t buy an election. It might buy a politician but not an election.
I’m sick.
jferguson,
Yep. That’s the way she seems to view the constitution. But Trump doesn’t appear much different. They just want different views.
Yeah. :/ I was about to point that out too.
Lucia wrote: “That’s the way she seems to view the constitution. But Trump doesn’t appear much different. ”
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Perhaps, but Trump has pledged to appoint justices that DO respect the constitution, unlike Hillary.
10 – 2
Live – Bottom 8th
I’m reminded of Flip Wilson and his Church of What’s Happening Now.
That’s how H sees the court. Maybe whoever gets it will inadvertently appoint a respecter or two. We can hope.
Lucia: “jferguson,
Yep. That’s the way she seems to view the constitution. But Trump doesn’t appear much different. They just want different views.”
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What is troubling about this is that Clinton is a lawyer and simply abandons what she knows for political advantage. Trump has a little bit of an excuse.
JD
Lucia,
are you watching the game on FS-1 or is it on a local chicago station?
JD,
Sure. She should know better. That said, she hasn’t been a practicing attorney for a long time. Out of curiosity, is there any evidence she was a talented attorney? She moved on the “first lady of Arkansas” pretty early on. I know she still kinda-sorta worked. But that I never really believed Patty Blagojevich got listing because of her talent moving real estate.
Lucia: “is there any evidence she was a talented attorney?”
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Complicated question. She did fail the DC bar exam. She worked for a large firm (Rose firm in Little Rock) and sat on the Board of Directors of Wal-Mart. Webster Hubbell of the Rose Firm was convicted of fraud for billing for 24 hours a day and was the second in command of the Attorney General’s office under WJC during part of the first term; so her connection with Rose is certainly not evidence of her being a talented lawyer. Hillary obviously had many valuable connections during her time in Arkansas, and so she almost certainly did not have to extensively practice real law — almost certainly she functioned more like a lobbyist and rain maker. Essentially, I see no evidence that she had any special skills or accomplishments as a lawyer. There was no reason for her to do real work when she could leverage her connections.
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The role of the Supreme Court is very well known to any 1st year law student, probably before the beginning of a student’s first semester. If not by then, at least by the first two weeks of law school. Clinton, not practicing as extensively as most lawyers do, is not an excuse for her inaccurately characterizing the role of the Supreme Court.
JD
Chris Wallace did awesome. Much more substance in this debate. Polls suggest Clinton won. Trump refusing to say he will accept the outcome of the election is a major screwup.
I wonder what the pass rate was on the DC bar exam. I had thought something like 85% on Illinois bar in the ’90s when Hillary’s performance first surfaced. But D.C’s?
Carrick,
I also thought Wallace was good, and maybe the format worked better than the other two tries.
Trump won clearly but Hilary polished as well.
Media has been stacked against Trump in Australia big time though we cannot vote. A good thesis on how many anti trump news items run daily. 4-5 a day here.
If same over there it will take a Brexit vote of anti-establishment to get him up. Cannot see it but some strange sporting results with underdogs, Leicester, etc this year.
Where is the pro abortion [woman’s choice] anti big spending, gun control candidate that you need so badly?
After the debate Donna Brazil came on Fox apparently unprepared for Megyn Kelly bringing up the O’Keef tapes. Brazil’s only response was to attack “the man who is a convicted felon.” Megyn swung back, “Do you mean Creamer, the man who met with President Obama over 40 times at the over hundreds of visits to the WH?” After correcting that she was referring to O’Keef, Brazil pivoted to the Hillary talking points she thought she was going to give while the split screen is showing brawling and bloody images at a couple of the Trump rallies. Then just when Brazil thought she had successfully broken free of the hiring of thugs Megyn brought up the Wiki Leaks of CNN admitting they colluded with her on the 1st debate questions. Brazil blandly said she had not reviewed her email and could not say it was authentic without seeing it. Apparently she could not remember if she colluded with CNN or not. She worked at CNN before she took over the chair of the DNC from Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who had to resign after Wiki Leaks showed the DNC colluding with Clinton to beat Sanders, the other DNC candidate. Sanders is supporting Clinton because he trusts her to follow the planks he was able to negotiate into the party platform. You have to love his naivete.
j ferguson: I think in part this format worked so well because of Wallace.
angech, I actually think Trump stepped in it, multiple times and badly. He had a fair number of stupid, unforced errors that will come back to haunt him. After a very good start, it’s like his attention starts to drift… maybe after 30 minutes or so. Maybe he was wondering how the Cub’s game was going.
CNN had Clinton winning by 52/39. They had “who is better to lead the country” though, at 59/35 (approximate number, saw it on the screen) for Clinton.
I personally expect the polls to continue to widen, especially in battleground states. Without something major, we’re into landslide territory at this point. Trump’s already demonstrated he can drown out Wikileaks, so it has to be really major.
Ron Graf: As I understand it, the thing about the Brazile leak is it’s unconfirmed any question was actually leaked (I don’t put it beyond Brazile to lie about access to questions that she didn’t actually have for example), and the question that was supposedly leaked was never used. Remember you’re looking at private emails. The email can be legitimate, but that still doesn’t mean everything in them is necessarily reliable.
Carrick, the Brazile question she reported to Team Hillary was asked. The CNN partner who wrote the question is claiming they didn’t write it until after the Brazile e-mail, which was nearly verbatim.
I am surprised there was no fact-check of Trump’s saying 1.7 billion, enough money to fill up this debate hall. Then today I noticed he is trying to produce a visual image when he said as big as this stage.
Lucia, it is pretty well established on the Right that Hillary was not doing any real work. I think this was the reason they were looking for billing records.
What I don’t get is the disparity of claims on Clinton Foundation, with many saying they spent 6%, and they are claiming 90%.
She spoke of how we need to condemn Russian hackers, Trump could have said you let them or someone else hack your server, which let them hack the State Department and then OPM. He could even talk about the Iranian scientist who was killed for helping us.
Probably too tricky, but when she said she would carefully vet refugees, he could have said like she vetted Alicia Machado.
MikeN, it wasn’t actually the same question as the one that was asked at the townhall. I’d guess that the townhall question was a paraphrase of the question Brazile saw. But we’ve never really learned the providence of that original question (I would guess it did not come from Martin).
I do know that Brazile lies…a lot. From my perspective, there’s no more reason to trust her on this than anything else she says. She strikes me as the type who would inflate her role in something.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/10/roland-martin-cnn-email-donna-brazile-wikileaks-229673
The lower figure is “pass through”, which works when you have a foundation that gathers funds then primarily performs charity by dispersing them to needy organizations (e.g., donations to hospitals). I understand that a lot of Clinton Foundation monies are spent “in house”, that is they perform the charitable functions within the organization, so the pass through number isn’t very useful to assess what percentage of their dollars go to charitable acts.
http://www.factcheck.org/2015/06/where-does-clinton-foundation-money-go/
He could say it, but it’s not a strong point, since it’s untrue. The State Department server has been a pretty frequent successful target for Russian hackers. That has nothing to do with Clinton as far as I know.
MikeN, I’ll point you to this report:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/interactive/2016/07/06/management-assistance-report-june-2016/
instead of trying to summarize it. This relates to one of my chief bones to pick with the Republicans (Chaffetz committee in this case). They are laser focussed on Clinton, but apparently not very concerned with mundane things like actual oversight of the federal bureaucracy that they are tasked for oversight of.
The FoxNews article on this is below:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/07/07/thousands-state-department-e-mail-accounts-still-risk-being-hacked-report-says.html
Carrick, could you give an example of the passthru with numbers
Your link about the State Department is from 2015. I think this hack was caused by Hillary’s server.
Carrick: ” The State Department server has been a pretty frequent successful target for Russian hackers. That has nothing to do with Clinton as far as I know.”
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In my view, as Secretary of State, she is ultimately responsible for the security of its email and other computer systems. So, I do think she bears a major responsibility for the State Department systems being insecure if that is the case. One of the strongest arguments against Clinton is that she knows virtually nothing about computers and is incompetent to manage security as President.
JD
W2hat I don\t get is 17 US spy agencies confirming Russia is hacking their security systems and no one is doing anything about it??
What sort of comment is this or is it only election time?
I mean if Russia was doing it where are the US efforts stopping it.
Where is the United Nations complaint about it with “proof”
Where is the American President standing up to Putin and saying stop?
Where is the withdrawal of ambassadors , the suspension of Banking and communication and trade agreements?
Where is the action?
It is a phony complaint in a phony war against Trump.
Angech: “What I don\t get is 17 US spy agencies confirming Russia is hacking their security systems and no one is doing anything about it?”
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Several responses here. Undoubtedly as part of its spying activities, the US is doing the same thing. Second, on my part, since Clinton destroys public records, the only way Americans can find out what she is doing is through hacks done by others.
JD
Carrick, after sleeping on it I find I’ve got to agree with you.
Yup.
There were moments that he did OK. But he needed to do a lot better than OK, and he didn’t. I hate it because IMO listening to the debate it wasn’t far fetched that he could have delivered a much better performance if he’d prepared. It didn’t look to me like he prepared, it looked like he was winging it. And he didn’t wing it all that well.
I basically agree with your assessment too – he didn’t turn the tide. Whatever outcome was probable before the debate is still the probable outcome today, afterwards.
Too bad.
There’s something bizarre about 17 agencies agreeing that the Russians are behind it. Do they do separate research? Next it will be 97 scientists.
It smacks of someone giving you three reasons why he’s late to a meeting.
I suppose these 17 agencies also said there were WMD’s in Iraq. And for the same reason: The president wanted them to say that.
Yes. One of the many areas where I was disappointed in Trump’s response.
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It’s not for me to say what the best answer might have been. I would have preferred for him to flip that on her. Say something like ‘Is it any surprise that the Russians are successfully hacking the DNC and our government? This is the lady who kept classified information on the server in her house, who used unsecured devices in territories where information was highly vulnerable to attack. And maybe, just maybe; if Hillary and the DNC weren’t up to so much questionable stuff, there wouldn’t be any substance there for the Russians to exploit.’
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I’d have thought Trump’s people could come up with something better than what I could. Maybe they did and Trump just didn’t study. Maybe they didn’t. Dunno, but there were many moments like that that I thought were pretty disappointing. I felt like half the debate was wasted while Trump babbled, apparently trying to organize his thoughts and improvise something to say.
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Ugly thought, but honestly. If that’s the best effort Trump is prepared to make, maybe he really doesn’t have any business winning the election.
The biggest irony of the night is the attacks by Clinton and media that it’s Trump who is dividing the country. But I agree that Trump should have clarified the circumstances for which he might challenge the election results. Hillary’s list of examples at the end of Trump’s sore loserdom unfortunately was her high point. That gave the press the excuse to erase the other 90 minutes of the debate. He almost had it.
Ron Graf: “That gave the press the excuse to erase the other 90 minutes of the debate.”
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You still don’t get it. It does not matter. The press would have found something negative about Trump to harp on no matter what he did. Trump’s only hope is to try to talk directly to the people, which is what he has been doing all along.
Trump apparently believes that hordes of people are crossing our borders to vote illegally in November. I didn’t need the MSM to tell me this. He did.
Improbable.
Trump is a talented guy. It’s plain that he can screw up repeatedly without help from anyone else, much less the MSM. Hillary not quite so much.
IDK. I don’t think we need hordes crossing the border, according to Hillary we already have 11 million right here today. People can call them ‘undocumented’ till they’re blue in the face; these people don’t have a right to vote.
What Trump could have said: “My campaign has been about making America great again. One of America’s greatest prides is the smooth transition of power. As a matter of fact, I just pledged to introduce legislation that would impose term limits of 6 years to congress and 12 years to senators. The recent corruption that has been uncovered by the Veritas Project and through emails is indicative of the danger of political classes and dynasties taking over Washington. I would of course abide by the will of the people’s vote and the electoral process which I will do everything possible to preserve the integrity of.”
Ron,
Yep.
JD Ohio:
In pratice, I think she would have very limited responsibility here. I’m certainly no expert on how our federal bureaucracy functions, but here’s what I believe to be true:
This gives a description of the duties of the Secretary of State (SOS). I think the main focus for the SOS duties is implementation of the President’s policies and oversight of our relationships with foreign government.
I’ve brought this up before, but I don’t believe the SOS has any direct domestic oversight responsibilities over the function of the bureaucracy (civil service), except as it affects the SOS’s mission outlined above. I believe the reason this happens is we don’t want political appointees who come and go at the will of the President to be interferring with the day-to-day operations of the bureuacracy that is nominally underneath them.
Even with the President there is a limit on his authority over the civil service. See for example, the Civil Service Reform Act. One example of the limit of the president’s powers is he can’t fire at will anybody except political appointees.
Technically the 15 departments are under presidential supervision, but some of the supervision authority has been passed to the independent agencies (the “Fourth Branch”). For example, the National Archives and Records Administration is responsible for oversight relating to records preservation.
Again this is meant to limit the power of the presidency and insure continuity in the operation of the federal bureaucracy, and like everything else, is designed to limit undue politically motivated inteference with the day-to-day operations of our government.
This WaPo article gives some idea about the tensions between the Presidency and the “Fourth Branch”.
But that’s true for virtually every single politician. Certainly Trump even less than Clinton about computer systems. I would say “vitually nothing” in Trump’s case, based on his descriptions of how computer files get deleted.
MikeN:
With respect to the 2015 hacks, mulitiple breaches occurred that year, and in agencies would not have been affected by any putative hack of Clinton’s server. So that looks like quite a stretch to me.
it seems unlikely that any president could ever have even partial expertise in all of the disciplines and pursuits for which he/she is responsible. What we should expect is competence in choosing staff, and discerning who to trust and who not to trust and pruning as warranted.
In Trump’s case it isn’t as critical since he appears to listen to no-one but family. In Clinton’s on the other hand, she has repeatedly shown poor choices in staff (and para-staff) most recently Sidney Blumenthal, but before that Mark Penn, Lani Guinier, Ira Magaziner.
Having said that I find Cheryl Mills very impressive.
I wonder if anyone else here picked up on all of the observations that Hillary is a good listener, particularly at the convention. i suspect that she isn’t a good listener although that wouldn’t necessarily mean she doesn’t hear what people are saying to her.
I submit that the only enterprises she has actually run were her campaigns and the healthcare endeavor – not the State Department. I haven’t been much impressed by the performance in campaigns or the healthcare initiative without getting into the craziness of her healthcare pursuit.
Obama demonstrated weakness in management particularly choice of chiefs of staff, and disinterest in minding the store. We should be able to see how it’s going to go with her as soon as she names a chief of staff.
maybe what I’ve written above is too vague.
BTW, JD, do you think the issue with the Whitewater billing records was that she might not have actually worked on it but was billed anyway, or billed at 24 hours/day or what??
MikeN:
How about the ALS Association? Much of their funding goes to competitive grants to researchers or to care providers.
Charity Watch gives them an A- and says 79% of their monies raised goes to charitable activities.
In practice it’s smaller than 79%… if you fund a researcher, you also pay overhead to his institution. So it could be as little as 50% (part of the money might end up in the athletic program or paying salaries of English professors for example).
j ferguson wrote: “In Trump’s case it isn’t as critical since he appears to listen to no-one but family.”
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I don’t buy that. In his business, he obviously listens to lawyers, architects, engineers, financiers, etc. And he seems to have taken advice in his campaign: changing key people, using a teleprompter (at least at times), giving some traditional policy speeches.
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Machiavelli says that a leader should trust his own judgement and tell his staff that when he wants their advice, he will ask for it. Otherwise, the staff will end up running things. The point is not to ignore advice, but to keep it clear as to who makes the decisions and who is a resource for the leader to use as needed. I think that is what Trump does.
Edit: If not clear, the above refers to setting policy, not to the technical details of implementation.
Mike M,
I think I relied on his conspicuous bungling of a campaign against the most easily beatable Democratic presidential candidate since George McGovern. I cannot believe that anyone is advising him to say so many of the goofy things he’s said.
Carrick, there would not be a direct link from Hillary’s server to the other systems. Rather, I think her server was the first weak point, from which they were able to get to the State Department, and from there to other systems. It’s not like it happened in hours.
Martin sent the identical question in an e-mail to CNN. What was asked on-air was different. Martin says he wrote it the same day, which means Brazile somehow fed the question to both.
U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump stirred social media ire on Wednesday after he said: “We have some bad hombres here” and referred to Democratic rival Hillary Clinton as “such a nasty woman.”
The term “Bad Hombres” became one of the most-discussed topics of the night on U.S. social media and was tweeted out about 134,000 times during and immediately after the debate, according to digital marketing technology company Amobee.
“Such a nasty woman,” he said.
The comment struck many online as sexist, with over 300,000 tweeting the phrase “nasty woman” by the early hours of Thursday.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-debate-socialmedia-idUSKCN12K0I4
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However, many agreed there are some bad “ombres†out there, referring to a hair style that starts with one color and ends with another.
T-shirts will be available with slogans such as “I’m With Nasty†and “Nasty Women in the Whitehouse.
I think that perhaps Trump has it right about the election – in effect – being rigged and guess whom could be blamed for the rigging of it in a conspiratorial and narcissistic world of a Donald Trump. Why none other than the all powerful Donald Trump.
The evidence is crystal clear to the astute observer of politics in the US. Hillary, the Democrat designated heir to the throne, was revealed to have many flaws that might detrimentally affect her ascendency. Along comes a former Democrat in Trump who runs against the Republican politicians as an outsider and a populist. He gets the attention of the MSM and his outsider image is used to cover up some of his boorish behavior and when it cannot be completely blacked out it is used as to reinforce the idea that the voting public is desperate for someone outside the political elites. This had a bipartisan slant to it with the advent of Sanders “challenging” Hillary as an outsider even though Sanders was a House and Senator member caucusing with the Democrats for 25 years. Currently Sanders is all in for Hillary.
As more evidence detrimental to Hillary arrived on the scene the more Trump did to deflect the issue back to his boorishness and his rather populist and pedestrian views of political issues. When Hillary’s poll numbers appeared to drop, Trump was right there to do something that appeared foolish to the voting public to bolster those numbers back up for Hillary. The effective election rigging by Trump has gone beyond a third Clinton presidency and has reached down into local races where he has done much to give Clinton a fighting chance for majorities in the Senate and House that will allow her to push the Democrat agenda.
In the end, one would have to say, and perhaps even Trump would have to admit, that he threw the election in a big way for Clinton – or otherwise admit to him being an impotent loser.
Carrick, it appears the difference in numbers is not primarily due to pass thru vs direct spending, but rather the choice of denominator. Current assets are over 300 million.
The 6% comers from 9 million out of 149 million revenue.
The 89% is taken from expenses, which is a much smaller number.
For Clinton Foundation alone, it is 80%, 68 out of 84 million.
So just using same denominator, the it would be 6% vs 46%, or 11% vs 80%.
http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2013/311/580/2013-311580204-0b0083da-9.pdf
Direct salaries paid are small, 0 to tens of thousands, but there are some independent contractors getting half million to million dollar annual payments, for what looks like a relatively easy website.
Then there is the matter of how much of the program expenses are really program expenses. The grants are going to entities that are run by Clintons and associates. Bruce Lindsey is not getting any salary from the group co-run by AHA, but again there are more contractors.
I think people are missing the point about Trump’s refusal to accept election results. Has nothing to do with Al Gore doing the same thing, or there is vote fraud, or the system is rigged. He signed a pledge to support the Republican nominee, then he broke it. So he clearly would not feel the need to stick to a statement of support for the election result. So we have to focus on why didn’t he make that safe statement that costs him nothing. He sees a benefit in not making that pledge.
In the primaries, it made sense, he was saying vote for me or you lose the election. He doesn’t get that benefit here.
Kenneth,
we keep thinking that the Donald must be working for Hillary. No-one could be so self destructive without intent.
There is a good piece by Michael Gerson in today’s WaPo speculating about what might happen were a competent politician to take up Trump’s sword in a future election. He doesn’t match this with the other ticket being headed by the second least popular candidate in recent memory. I think that would be required for the competent demagogue to prevail.
Kenneth,
🙂 Not too shabby.
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MikeN,
I’m not following you. I read you as saying you think his position on the election results has nothing to do with voter fraud or the system being rigged. Then I read you going on wonder why he made the statement and speculate that he must see a benefit in what he’s going.
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Do you have a suggestion as to what that benefit is? [not rhetorical] Because if not, I don’t understand how you rule out that it’s about voter fraud or the system being rigged.
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Personally, my confidence that I had some tenuous grasp on where Donald Trump was coming from has been shaken by this last debate, so I really don’t have a confident opinion about this, I’m just curious what you’re thinking.
MikeN wrote: “He signed a pledge to support the Republican nominee, then he broke it.”
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Huh? I am pretty sure that Trump is supporting the Republican nominee [Trump]. Some of the others who signed that pledge have indeed broken it. But I agree that it would seem to cost him nothing now to pledge to accept the result, even if such pledge was insecure. Either he is pathologically honest, or he seems some benefit in stirring that pot. I doubt the former and I don’t see what the latter might be.
Mark, if Trump could have said he will accept the results of the election and then said no after the election for a particular reason, then that reason is not a valid explanation of why he gave the answer he gave. There was a benefit for him to give a different answer, with no loss as far as challenging the election if he loses. I say he had time to think about his answer, and chose an alternative answer, seeing a benefit there.
Mike, around the time of Wisconsin primary, Trump said he was not sticking to the pledge. I think this won him votes.
MikeN,
I’m still not really following you, but that’s OK. 🙂 Thanks for trying to explain it to me.
Carrick: ” In my view, as Secretary of State, she is ultimately responsible for the security of its email and other computer systems.
In pratice, I think she would have very limited responsibility here. I’m certainly no expert on how our federal bureaucracy functions, but here’s what I believe to be true:
This gives a description of the duties of the Secretary of State (SOS)”
….
Anyone to be successful at any type of management or executive position, or higher, has to be creative and go beyond the bare minimum of whatever the technical requirements of the job may be. For a Secretary of State to function in any minimal way, communications with foreign governments and American operatives have to be secret. So, irrespective of what Clinton’s technical job description was, she should have assumed responsibility for security (or more practically found very skilled and sophisticated people to manage security.)
…..
Instead of doing that, she actually compromised security by setting up her own server. So, whatever the technical descriptions for her responsibilities were, I believe that practically, she had to assume responsibility for them to do her job. Of course, she is computer illiterate and is virtually incapable of managing or monitoring security, even if she did have the good faith motivation of doing her job and protecting lives. In the really big picture, this simply means she was not qualified to be Secretary of State and should not have been appointed. However, at this late stage, other than viewing her performance as Secretary of STate as an indication of whether she is qualified to be President, this is all water under the bridge.
….
Of course, putting aside her lack of ethics, what this indicates to me is that she will be unable to competently manage security questions if she becomes President. Unfortunately, there are many traits of both candidates that severely compromise their ability to be a good President. However, the “security incompetence” of Clinton is one of the more important serious flaws that she has.
JD
The handle on Trump is that he not a career politician. He is prone to the gaffs that non-politicians make. Anything the media can jump on as a gaffe is a gaffe.
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He was coached not to refer to her as a woman but as a “person” and he caught himself twice earlier before he slipped. But by the end had slipped off his good behavior and said “what a nasty woman.”
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PC is the first issue of the left, along with climate change. All others are old and tired issues. Trump should point out if we address the deficit, the economy, healthcare, political corruption, foreign policy and national security then PC and environmental issues practically take care of themselves.
“if we address the deficit, the economy, healthcare, political corruption, foreign policy and national security…”
Ron, I agree with the sentiment, but I have no faith that Trump would address these in a substantive way. He might not make them *worse*, as seems likely with Clinton.
I agree with Lucia: my main disappointment was the non-appearance of Thor.
JD,
The way you describe the responsibility she should have had for one aspect of her purview suggests that you think she should have understood more of the mechanics than she did. You don’t need to be a pilot to order a drone attack. Maybe this isn’t what you meant.
She did need to understand that security was important and she did need to periodically review the issue with whoever actually was responsible for security at State. It could be that this position was a civil-service job and the reporting chain would have run up the civil-service ladder to some other person who also didn’t understand the technical ramifications who then reported sort of laterally to Hillary’s gang.
I can easily imagine this. A lot of my corporate career was as the top guy who actually knew what was going on in the projects. And i often reported to people who would never have understood or didn’t want to know. She may have had someone like that running interference with the real world of security. She shouldn’t have had, and if she was a competent manager, which i think she isn’t, would have discovered it and fixed it. But she didn’t.
She apparently did know that the State non-secure system was really non-secure, but also appeared never to try to have something done about it. Bigger fish to fry, no doubt, or weddings and yoga lessons as she so artfully put it.
Late Edit: JD, it looks like you may have improved your post a bit since I wrote the above, or maybe I didn’t read it carefully enough – we seem to be on same page.
J Ferguson: “The way you describe the responsibility she should have had for one aspect of her purview suggests that you think she should have understood more of the mechanics than she did.”
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I would answer that yes, in today’s world, it is important for high government leaders to understand computers and security. (For instance, I am merely a lawyer, but I have approximately 50 email addresses for security reasons. A Secretary of State should at least have my understanding.) On the other hand, it is not absolutely disqualifying to be unfamiliar with computers and security [At least for Secretary of State. With respect to the office of President, this is a close question]. However, a person unskilled with computers and security, at least has to have the motivation to find skilled and sophisticated people to help her with a very important issue. Clinton was so obtuse and uninformed that she didn’t understand the importance of the issue and the necessity to devote time and effort to it. On top of that she had bad faith motivations to protect herself, which also compromised security.
JD
An important perspective on the Clintons from Hamilton Jordan (former aide to Jimmy Carter)
“Con Artists
When one considers pardons for political friends and donors, gifts to the White House taken by the Clintons for their personal use, and the attempt to lease extravagant penthouse offices for the former president with taxpayer money, a better word comes to mind: grifters.
“Grifters was a term used in the Great Depression to describe fast-talking con artists who roamed the countryside, profiting at the expense of the poor and the uneducated, always one step ahead of the law, moving on before they were held accountable for their schemes and half-truths.
“No longer able to dominate the national news with moving speeches or policy initiatives, the First Grifters have been unable to move beyond the Marc Rich pardon, White House gifts and other events related to their noisy and ungraceful departure from office. Robbed of the frills of high office, we can now examine these last-minute pardons — and the Clintons — for what they are.”
See http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB982638239880514586
JD
Hillary may win by a larger margin than Obama won in 2012 when he got 7.9 percentage points more of the popular vote than Romney. The last RCP poll average before the 2012 election had Obama winning by only 0.7 points, this large underestimate thought to be a Republican bias in most polls that made up the average. In today’s RCP poll average, Hillary leads Trump by 7.9 points, a much greater advantage than Obama’s 0.7 in 2012.
Polls are slippery fish. here on this RCP page I get the sense that Hillary is 6.4 points ahead. Yet here looking at the latest polls I’d think the race a lot closer.
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I can see what happened I guess. The latest polls listed for today happen to be the ones that find the race tight; Rasmussen, IBD, and LA Times. Lots of other polls find Hillary has a larger lead (Quinnipiac, Bloomberg, Reuters, Economist); these are listed for yesterday.
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I don’t know. Even bearing in mind my bias, I suspect the race is actually tighter than 7.9 points somehow. ~shrug~ I doubt Trump is in fact leading, as Rasmussen Reports finds, but 8 points.. I doubt it.
J Ferguson:
There have been questions about various aspects of this floating around since I first started working on military related projects (circa 1999). That includes questions about not being able to trust the DOS personnel with classified material AND issues with leaks to the press, opposition, and even foreign actors.
I think, chiefly for political reasons, Clinton won’t admit the reason she established a private server was because of her concern over leaking of her private conversations. I think part of this is justified and part of it is her Nixonian-level of paranoia.
JD Ohio: You might be surprised that, in spite of going down very different roads there, in terms of where our thoughts lead us, we end up in basically the same place with respect to Clinton.
For somebody who is in many respects hyper-vigilant, I think there is a consistent pattern sloppiness on Clinton’s part that has consistently lead to bad outcomes.
The deaths of Stevenson and Smith in Benghazi are endemic of that—Very specifically, if I read the statutes correctly, Clinton had personal responsibility to over-see their safety. Not only did she allow them to enter a high-risk environment without adequate security, she exposed and essentially destroyed the entire US diplomatic mission there through the deaths of these two individuals in Benghazi. (If you’re wondering, it seems pretty obvious to me that she had no role in with the later mortar attack on a separate CIA facility that killed two CIA contractors.) Benghazi was a disaster on a personal level and for US foreign policy. Clinton’s sloppiness was responsible for both.
Secondly, I’ve seen it suggested here that Clinton’s programs lack specificity. I don’t think that’s actually an issue, two dozen reports, 50,000 words (the “best words”) is a lot of detail especially compared to Trump’s kindergarten coloring book level of detail for most of his proposals. (He doesn’t even have a real plan for his wall. How tall should it be? How are you going to build it in the more rugged terrain? What happens in the section where it parallels the Rio Grande? etc.)
I think the real problem is most of Clinton’s policy papers are basically pipe dreams. She has no hope (again my opinion) even in a Congress that was controlled by Democrats in both House and Senate, to get most of this passed.
If you want to see what a Clinton legislative effort looks like from beginning to end, her 1993 health care initiative is a good template. She’ll convert allies to enemies, and (paraphrasing Colin Powell’s comments) damage everything she touches with her hubris.
Almost every poll included in the RCP average underestimated the Obama vote in 2012, even those that had him winning, reflecting a Republican bias across the board. I don’t know whether today’s polls have a Republican bias, but if they do, expect Hillary to win by a larger margin than the last RCP average before the election.
MAX_OK,
I think what you’re saying is correct. My impression is that its not directly a Republican bias, but shifts in the demographics and in particular the participation of the various demographics groups in the elections. For example, my understand is that if we expect 75% of a specific group (say African Americans) to vote as opposed to 76%, the impact can be significant.
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Again, I’m pretty sure Hillary is ahead, but I’m not sure by how much. I expect her lead to increase over time as new polls reflect the debate results.
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It’d take a WikiLeak miracle to save Trump at this point. That or Hillary would have to have a stroke in public or something like that.
By the way, Clinton’s failure to get comprehensive healthcare reform passed has massively affected our pocketbooks, and has lead to millions of detrimental healthcare outcomes. She made the issue toxic for a generation. This isn’t a small matter.
http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/blog/the-costs-of-failure
mark bofill (Comment #153036)
October 20th, 2016 at 2:49 pm
MAX_OK,
I think what you’re saying is correct. My impression is that its not directly a Republican bias, but shifts in the demographics and in particular the participation of the various demographics groups in the elections …
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I agree. I don’t think the bias is intentional.
The polls may be better than they were in 2012. We will see.
MAX_OK wrote: “Almost every poll included in the RCP average underestimated the Obama vote in 2012,”
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The notable exception was the Rand survey, which got the spread almost exactly right. That is now the L.A. Times poll, which has consistently had Trump doing better, relative to other national polls. L.A. Times presently has Trump and Clinton tied. So if that poll is once again correct, the race is very close.
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Moral: Don’t put too much faith in polls.
Hi Carrick,
I agree with what you’ve written above. I suppose the best we can hope for is that she’s a single-term place holder and someone competent will show up in 2020.
I’m sure there are a few of us here who live in swing states who will vote for her, but I don’t see any who are enthusiastic about it.
I think Maureen Dowd wrote a piece about Hillary’s Nixonian aspect. What’s most troubling is that her reception by Congress is likely to provoke even more paranoiac responses.
She’ll also likely lose any control over her disdain for the rest of us. “Everyday Americans” indeed. Why could none of her coterie have convinced her that this was demeaning. Maybe she couldn’t handle “Morlock”. Deplorables was another shot across the same bow.
Nobody I’ve broached this to seems to agree, but I continue to think her fear is that she will be discovered convincingly to be ordinary and not brilliant. Working really hard may be a way to compensate for want of inspiration. (If anyone agrees with what I just wrote, I’d love to hear it. You’d be the first)
It is amazing that the Republicans were able to come up with someone worse. There cannot be many out there.
Max_OK: As most of us know who look at polling science, the big uncertainty is converting the (largely objective) registered voter data into subjective likely voter data. I can’t find it immediately, but there’s an article where four different pollsters analyze the same data, and come to about a five point swing based on how they use different weights to the same polling questions. If I remember where I saw it, I’ll post it.
Anyway, as I understand it, part of the reason that Obama did so well in the polls is his “get out the vote” initiative (strong ground game).
Clinton has incorporated that strategy (and many of the same people) into her own campaign, and is way ahead of Trump.
I am anticipating about a 3-point bias over the RCP average in favor of Clinton based on her more effective campaign strategy. If I’m right, this is a big problem not only for Trump but for down-ballot Republican candidates too. I don’t see on paper how this could turn into big enough of a rout that the Republicans lose control of the House, but loss of the Senate looks really likely to me.
Ever has the GOP been cunning and resourceful at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory…
j ferguson—I mostly agree with you here, though as a political wonk, she is certainly gifted. If you want her craftsmanship over the years at debates, she can rattle off statistics and minutia with the best of them. In that respect, watching her (what I think is a devastating manhandling of Trump) at the 3rd debate is actually praise worthy.
If you said “Clinton has a tremendous chip on her shoulder”, I would certainly agree with that. The problem isn’t intellect, IMO, it’s conceit and lack of basic political skill needed to get things accomplished.
Regarding the other—I really don’t expect her to be more than a one-term president.
And yes I agree—this presidential election was one for the Republicans to lose. There are so many ways that Clinton should have lost … bigly.
It was only by putting up this narcissistic fool of a man that they are in the process of losing. I get why people are upset and want change. He was never going to deliver the type of change people actually needed.
Carrick wrote: ” He was never going to deliver the type of change people actually needed.”
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So please tell us who can deliver the type of change people actually need.
Carrick,
As always Carrick, I value hearing your opinion and listening what you’ve got to say. Thanks for speaking frankly.
Mike M.
I think the problem that’s coming is lower levels of employment. Assuming the economy is thriving despite this, we will finding ourselves supplementing the incomes of those not working. I see the cost at one issue, but a lesser one. Much more worrying is that the self-respect of many of those who might otherwise want to work may diminish. These will be good people who simply cannot find something they can do, and maybe despite being talented.
There were a couple of articles in WaPo, one by George Will which spoke to this. What else could follow from the increasing automation of work in this country? My god, even cab drivers?
Mike M, the problem is in assuming the only way to solve the problem is by revolutionary change. That leads to vulnerability and exploitation by wannabe strongmen like Trump.
Nearly any competent leader (Romney, Rubio, Jeb Bush, Kaisch) could move things “in the right direction”. Build on your successes, learn from your failures. Iterate.
j ferguson, I think the issue isn’t just unemployment, it’s “underemployment” that is driving people’s angst.
Basically people need better jobs and better prospects for employment besides working at the hardware store to replace their previously well-paying factory jobs.
I think that is possible to do, but it’s going to involve hard work to make it happen. Fortunately most of these people who are suffering in this post-industrial US are naturally hardworking individuals. Give them hope and a path to where they can achieve the lifestyles that they want, and I don’t think you’ll have a problem with them giving the effort needed.
To an extent, it needs somebody from outside of the Beltway to see this, who isn’t totally out of contact with the reality in the street. I think Kaisch (or somebody like him) would be a good choice, just because he’s in the middle of the war zone.
But we need to pick somebody who has a real vision for the future, not just some salesman no more plugged into the reality on the street than Clinton or Obama is.
I don’t see it coming from the left, primarily because they really don’t seem interested in people in that social class. Liberal elitist its worst.
max, wikipedia lists Romney as losing by less than 4.
Carrick there was no mission in Benghazi. The media’s calling it a consulate is wrong.
j ferguson: ” What else could follow from the increasing automation of work in this country? My god, even cab drivers?”
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Probably the same thing that happened to all those agricultural workers replaced by machines a century or so ago.
Carrick: “Nearly any competent leader (Romney, Rubio, Jeb Bush, Kaisch) could move things “in the right directionâ€.”
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That would require (1) an understanding of what the right direction is, (2) a willingness to move in that direction, and (3) the ability to get elected. Romney, Jeb Bush, and probably Kasich strike out. Rubio has some foul tips.
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Addition: The problem is that the problem can not be solved without a change in direction. If that constitutes “revolutionary change” then so be it.
MikeN—yep.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/general_election_romney_vs_obama-1171.html
+3.9 Obama was the final election result. +0.7 Obama was the final average of polls.
2008 results were closer to polling numbers
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_obama-225.html
+7.3 Obama final election results, _+7.6 Obama final polling average.
2004 results were pretty close too:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2004/president/us/general_election_bush_vs_kerry-939.html
Bush +2.4 election result, Bush +1.5 polling result.
I wouldn’t put any particular weight on any given poll, just because it happened to match up. I don’t think you can necessarily assume ABC/WaPo followed the same methodology between the different election cycles for example.
That said the ABC/WaPo seems to track pretty well over the years.
Mike,
The guys I had in mind don’t work at all. Their wives do. And it’s not sloth. more skill/opportunity misfit. More to follow.
MikeN:
Not sure what you’re saying…. The compound was certainly referred to as a diplomatic mission and as a “temporary consulate”.
It almost certainly was being used by the CIA to perform convert missions (possibly including intelligence gathering on local al Qaeda elements, transport of weapons to pro-US militia).
Is that what you are referring to?
Thinking that someone is going to come along as a winning politician to fix these problems of government is a pipe dream and a bit of a contradiction. Given the sentiments of the voting public that mostly are shaped by the intelligetsia and that the great majority of intellectuals favors more government and excuses failures of current government nothing will change until the intelligentsia changes.
Mike M:
I would say that a shift in direction certainly is a different thing that a revolutionary change. You can have revolutionary change without a change in direction, for example. Revolutionary changes are usually top-down dramatic changes. Evolutionary changes are usually bottom-up, incremental changes.
I think generally the later approach makes more sense here…it should be about getting people who are currently “economically dispossessed” back into the marketplace.
In the same vain as my previous post I have seen problems of government personalized such that the weaknesses of government are left unexposed. An example would be Hillary Clintons home based email server. The attempts on one side are to more or less ignore it or admit it was a Hillary Clinton mistake for which she has kind of taken responsibility for and thus let us move and the other side that appears to want blame Hillary alone and not the weakness of government in these matters. To those outside the realms of placing political blame, the problem comes across as one of government where rules are enforced arbitrarily and when violated with little or no repercussions for the violator(s). The Veteran Hospital problems would be a great example of little or no accountability on the part of government and government workers.
Steve Chapman who writes for the Chicago Tribune and claims to have libertarian leanings wrote an article about the IRS scandal denying conservative non profits equal opportunity for approval. He was attempting to minimize Obama’s involvement and responsibilities for the matter and pointed to his seemingly clean personal record as far as corruption of this kind was concerned for his administration. I had to point out to my libertarian claiming writer that when even a squeaky clean administrator has no influence on what his government bureaucrats are doing we have a bigger problem and it is (too much) government and government power.
Hi Carrick,
I suppose 1789 was, in a sense, top down. 😉
but…
maybe an example or two? maybe I’m being too simplistic. clearly revolutionary change requires leadership but sometimes the unrest is massive and when focused makes the change possible, and i guess I would say that massive unrest elicits bottom-up revolution.
Kenneth L Fritsch:
“Thinking that someone is going to come along as a winning politician to fix these problems of government is a pipe dream and a bit of a contradiction.’
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I am slightly more optimistic. I would say that is unlikely and would take a remarkable set of circumstances to happen. It would take massive unrest harnessed by an unusual outside-the-box candidate vs. an exceptionally weak traditional candidate. And even if the outsider were to win, success is hardly assured. So I am OK with Trump having happened, even if we end up with Crooked Hillary.
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“Given the sentiments of the voting public that mostly are shaped by the intelligetsia and that the great majority of intellectuals favors more government and excuses failures of current government nothing will change until the intelligentsia changes.”
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I agree. But the intelligentsia will not change from within. They need to be forced to change. Maybe a more acceptable Republican will follow in Trump’s footsteps, but I am not optimistic.
j ferguson,
You are not being simplistic. Carrick’s claim that “Revolutionary changes are usually top-down dramatic changes. Evolutionary changes are usually bottom-up, incremental changes.” is silly.
j ferguson:
I’d say reagonomics would be a revolutionary success. Obamacare would be revolutionary, wiith mixed results at best.
As an example of evolutionary success, how about the “Contract with America” of 1994?
Kenneth Fritsch:
Yes exactly. The right is ignoring institutional weakness in the State Department in defererence to try and place everything that has gone wrong (and as we see in this thread, continues to go wrong) on Clinton’s shoulders.
That’s kind of transparent.
MAX_OK,
Here is a link that seems pertinent to our discussion before. It basically says [that by] changing the weighing [weighting] of the LA Times poll, the same data suggest Clinton is about 5 points ahead instead of in a tie with Trump.
Who the heck really knows.
[Edit: More relevant links here and here.]
Heck, they even have data and code. Steven Mosher would approve. 🙂 Never heard of StrataCode before though, we learn something every day.
MikeM said the Rand poll got the spread right in the 2012 election. Rand says it was 2.6 percentage points in favor of Obama.
https://alpdata.rand.org/?page=election2012
As readers pointed out, the actual spread in the popular vote was about 3.9 points, not the 7 something I gave in a previous post. Still, the Rand poll undervalued Obama’s victory by 1.3 points.
I think Carrick is reasonable in predicting Hillary will win by about 3 percentage points more than the final RCP poll average.
Mark, thank you for the links on th LA Times Poll.
I am having trouble keeping up with the discussion on polls, and apologize for not replying to all comments addressed to me.
No worries Max. I’m jus’ running my jaw, not actually saying anything particularly interesting, even to me. 🙂
Well I might as well accept the opprobrium. I’m printing “I’m with Nasty Woman” on the sticker which will find itself on the rear bumper in the morning. Bless you Donald.
Max, there is a bigger problem with the polling, which is surprisingly not appearing in the RCP numbers of 4 years ago. There appear to be sets of polls with a substantial difference in output. Some polls have Trump leading or tied, while others have him down by 8-10 or more. Can you really take an average like that and say it is accurate, or is it more likely for one set to be correct and the other way off?
Strangely, I remember the same thing happening 4 years ago, with the Justice Department threatening Gallup with charges after they were showing Romney winning. However, looking at the numbers now, they are not far off from other polls as I remember.
Anyone watch the Al Smith dinner? CNN is having a field day like it’s Chris Matthews vs Zell Miller.
MikeN, your comment had me looking for the RCP poll line up on Oct.20 2012 to compare with today’s polls but I couldn’t find it. The linked RCP chart shows the averages for Obama and Romney were getting closer to each other in the weeks leading up to the 2012 election. This was true for Hillary and Trump until about 18 days ago, when his average dropped. Probably this was caused by the tape but the debates also may have contributed.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/compare/presidential_election_comparing_2016_2012_2008_2004.html
Not sure how they do the cutoffs, but here is the lineup. I remember there being a Gallup +8 while others had Obama leading, but instead I see just Rasmussen as an outlier.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/general_election_romney_vs_obama-1171.html#polls
I just watched a video of the Al Smith dinner. Trump got booed during his speech for attacking Hillary who was sitting a few feet away. I think he was just trying to be funny but went too far. It looked like he was making a lot of people uncomfortable. His speech starts at about 17:20 on the linked video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGq4EtbvD6g
I’m sorry, I meant Trump doesn’t start until about 1:17:20 into the linked video.
With a good delivery Hillary’s would have been seen as normal I think except for the ending, although after Trump, people were primed to see even minor things as ‘too far’. A good delivery by Trump instead of merely reading would have been better, but still too far.
MikeN, I just saw the tape of the dinner. I am a Trump supporter and I felt uncomfortable. It’s a shame, he could have one the night by using the jokes Hillary used on himself. If she hadn’t been just as over the line he would have had to wear the “unprecedented jerk” hat. She only saved herself from boos by a better (more rehearsed) delivery. Trump had the joke with the most laughs though. He pointed out that Michelle Obama gave a speech and the media loved it. No surprise. Then Melania gave a speech — the exact same one and she got panned? (He apologized cutely to Melania and took the responsibility.)
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If Trump had not attacked HRC she would have looked like a witch going after him, particularly since she, unlike Trump, then called on a return of civility (stop inciting the deplorables).
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Trump would have slammed the debate yesterday with a self-deprecating remark. He needed a humility revealing moment.
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Carrick, I liked Kasich more than Trump also. But one must remember that he was weak on the stage until the last couple of debates, which by then it was too late.
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On the IRS scandal all I want to say is Lois Lerner took the 5th and then had her computer, backups and even the IRS general server backups all disappear, the later was destroyed a full year after the protection order and IRS internal search for it.
I didn’t think Hillary’s speech was much better, and I’m a supporter. I can see now that they were supposed to do a comedy roast of each other, but I just didn’t enjoy it.
Ron I agree with you, but I think Trump got what he wanted, particularly asking Melania for approval.
If he went too far, then it just brings him more attention.
If there had been a day or two in between I think Trump’s would have been much better, though probably not any nicer. Even the Melania speech joke could have been improved.
Hi Ron,
I too would have preferred Kasich, but even more Jeb Bush. it seems tragic that two such solid guys didn’t do better.
Charles Krauthammer on what he’s doing:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/my-vote-explained/2016/10/20/b61442a4-96f2-11e6-bc79-af1cd3d2984b_story.html?utm_term=.65cadb511ec8
He explained his unwillingness to vote for Trump in another column.
“Trump got what he wanted…” If he did self humor he would have gotten big points. Instead the press now block out the story of Hillary getting $12M from Morocco in exchange for an appearance there that left Huma in a panic spin trying to arrange things to avoid the appearance of the clear conflict.
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Looking back at last night I can see that there really was a good absurdity in Hillary sitting next to Cardinal Dolan just after her emails allege she hates Catholics. It’s all in the delivery.
I won’t bore the Blackboard too much further with this. Maybe it suffices to say that even after Trump’s lackluster performance at the final debate, I’m still using him to vote against Hillary. shrug
Here’s a decent article on reading the polls
I found last nights Al Smith speeches by the two candidates to be particularly cringeworthy.
Trump had more to gain coming in. He blew it. From a political strategy view, I think, given his strident comments, Clinton should have had a softer speech. She might have picked up another percentage point from it.
I haven’t really been following the new wikileaks (other than the speech transcripts). Mostly it’s been a nothing burger (people are human, revelvations that they are human aren’t revelations), and drowned out by Trump’s antics.
Anyway, Ron said something about the Catholic thing, so here it is:
http://wgntv.com/2016/10/12/clinton-spokeswoman-under-fire-for-anti-catholics-comments-in-leaked-email/
Jennifer Palmieri, it turns out, had negative things to say about conservative Catholics: “I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they became evangelicals.â€
[Having relatives who are conservatives & evangelicals, I can assure you this is very mild compared to some of the things that come across their newsfeeds about Catholics.]
Carrick,
IDK. I thought it was interesting that Hillary’s people think Obama flooded the 2008 caucuses with ineligible voters (podesta 10290). I thought there were some other interesting revelations in the WikiLeaks as well.
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Boys will be boys, huh. 😉
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I agree that Trump’s campaign hasn’t been making very effective use of it though, and that it doesn’t look like it’s going to make a decisive difference in the election.
mark, the issue for me is… if we looked “under the hood” on the Republican side, I wouldn’t expect to anything different/better.
If we’re going to look at everybody’s private communications in an organization with nearly 1000 people in it, I’d be shocked if you didn’t find anybody that behaved inappropriately.
As I see it, the only way this sort of nonsense would carry any weight is if we had the Republican and Democratic emails side-by-side, and you could show there was a real difference. Given the type of characters that Trump attracts (Steve Bannon types), my guess is Trump’d come out looking far less savory.
I don’t think the fact you have a peak “under the hood” for just one side confers much advantage, especially when it comes with the stigma of Russian involvement in US elections.
Where this would make a difference would be if you could link Clinton herself or her top aides to this type of sentiment. Short of that, I still think it’s a nothing burger.
Carrick,
No doubt. I don’t think there’s all that much difference between GOP and DNC. DNC runs a better game, basically.
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But I point it out because people shouldn’t be able to have it both ways. One shouldn’t simultaneously say ‘there’s no voter fraud’ and say ‘there’s no revelations in WikiLeaks’, unless one thinks WikiLeaks isn’t credible.
~shrug~
There are those who think Scott Walker used electronic voter fraud in Wisconsin. Dunno, wouldn’t necessarily surprise me. What did surprise me there is that he got into office in the first place and that he survived the recall.
But I digress.
I looked at the caucus email…
Somebody, who isn’t a Clinton principal, maybe not even a member of her organization, suspects dirty tricks from “the other side”.
Why is that even news”?
Mark Bofill:
Where’s the fraud you’re referring to?
Somebody’s suspicion of fraud isn’t an example of fraud. It’s an example of their suspicions.
That said, I do support election reform that includes some form of voter identification, as long as it doesn’t act to disenfranchise more voters than it protects.
The problem is many of the Republican voter ID laws (North Carolina and Alabama in particular), ended up mostly being an effort to disenfranchise black voters. Talk about rigging a system.
Carrick,
Come on. These guys are politicos, this is what they do. You don’t buy that they know what’s going on down in the trenches? [Edit: rhetorical. I sure think they do, better than we do.]
Proof? Of course it’s not proof. It’s the facts on the ground.
Carrick,
Regarding disenfranchizing voters, just so. I’ve already agreed with you, DNC and GOP are the same franchise with different jerseys. DNC doesn’t really give a crap about ‘undocumented’ people except because they vote democrat. GOP doesn’t really give a crap about voter ID and minorities except that they vote democrat. I’m not kidding myself about anybody’s motives here.
mark bofill, it’s not proof of anything, it’s second- or third-hand anecdotal information. This is Podesta reporting a rumor that some other people may or may not have heard.
You’re relying Podesta’s memory and his ability to “mind read” what somebody else thinks. It’s up there with talking about second-hand haunted house stories in terms of validity.
Normally this sort of thing wouldn’t meet normally journalistic standards. At the least you’d need to interview the people that Podesta was mentioning. And all that would establish is they really suspected that “Obama’s forces flooded the caucuses with ineligible voters”.
As to “You don’t buy that they know what’s going on down in the trenches?”, well, no actually. If they really knew, they’d have reported the other side and there’d have been a scandal.
My take is “sour grapes drives negative sentiment”. Not so much different than Trump crying “rigged system” because he’s currently getting his butt handed to him.
Thanks Carrick.
mark bofill—I do allow people humanity here too. I think there are Democrats who genuinely care about not breaking up families, and Republicans who feel their votes are getting diluted by dirty tricks from the other side.
My take on this is that the Republican Party is in trouble right now–the religious conservative platform simply doens’t appeal to a large enough slice of Americans for them to carry national elections.
The trouble is, anytime you write new legislation, it’s vulnerable to corruption. So where you lack any data at all demonstrating that voter frauda systematic problem, you end up with legislation that is supposed to address voter fraud, that undeniable is rigging the election.
We’ve replaced “possible” and “plausible” corrupt behavior, with definitely corrupt behavior. One is a rumor, the other is a fact.
My then 90 year old mother who lived in suburban Chicago asked me in 2008 if I thought Obama was evil. I didn’t and asked how she could think such a thing. It was the neighbors and their source was the priest at the local Catholic church.
I suspect, but don’t know, that the basis was likely Obama’s views on abortion. It would be really interesting if any of you have any more direct experience with this sort of thing.
Carrick,
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I agree with most of what you’re saying, possibly all of it. My cynicism certainly does not include the voters; I’m sure most of them believe that their party is about the ‘public positions’ they profess to care about.
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The GOP is indeed in trouble, and has been for awhile, I don’t disagree with you there.
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Regarding legislation, no argument there.
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Regarding rigging elections. I’ve written and deleted remarks here twice before posting; I’m not going to argue it with you. I think you’re being naive, that’s all. But maybe I’m the wackadoodle conspiracy theorist and you’re spot on, who knows. We can agree to disagree on this one I think.
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Seriously, thanks though. I do have immense respect for you and I do appreciate hearing what you have to say.
J Ferguson,
I’m not a believer at all, I’m an atheist. I’m a member of a methodist church though and go regularly, just as I’d go to a mosque if I happened to live in Cairo; some places if you want to be a member of the community you have to pay the price. Besides which, I do believe in taking local private action to benefit communities in preference to federal government assistance, so I make a special point of donating and personally participating in those activities, despite my utter abhorrence of some of the garbage my pastor utters during service.
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Basically, my pastor appears to be a lefty all the way. I couldn’t imagine him speaking against Barrack Obama. [Edit: How he squares with the left’s position on abortion I couldn’t say.]
Hi Mark,
I think I’m agnostic, not sure, but it seemed less work than being an atheist.
J,
Yah. Because it largely seems like a waste of time, rather than argue a case against God I might sometimes prefer to dodge the issue and say who knows. But between me myself and my dog, I’m pretty convinced it’s a load of hooey.
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[Edit: The abominable things my pastor talks about seldom have much to do directly with such things. I can’t begin to explain how offensive I found it, having to hear him explain that money comes from God and we’re all just stewards for it, and then proceed to exhort us to give the church more of our money. I’d have thought he could at least wrap the turd in a more sugary coating and say something like ‘God gave you the capacity to create value and do good work; use it for him.’ But nopers. It’s all God’s money, he just dribbles it on us. Shows an amazing ignorance of what money really is and how it relates to human work and the creation of value, IMO.]
Mark – me too.
mark bofill:
To be clear, I’m not saying rigging isn’t possible, I just demand proof. I think the idea of wide spread corruption in the error of wiki-leaks is actually less plausible now than it was before we had those leaks.
While I cynically view Assange (who is a weird cross between an anarchist and an apologist for strongmen), I think the fact there really hasn’t been any evidence of actual corruption as undermining the (sore-loser) Republican argument that the reason they are losing is because they are getting cheated.
That said, I have absolutely no problem with tightening up the voting system to make it even more difficult to genuinely rig any election or for individuals to cheat.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/how-to-rig-an-election/
Dad’s boss, the guy with total recall, was surprised to learn that despite having voted Republican in his Chicago precinct in 1960, the precinct had voted 100% democratic. We thought this was pretty typical that year.
Carrick (Comment #153085)
October 21st, 2016 at 9:39 am
“As I see it, the only way this sort of nonsense would carry any weight is if we had the Republican and Democratic emails side-by-side, and you could show there was a real difference.”
__________
I don’t know why Hillary didn’t ask to see the RNC e-mails. Make it an issue like the tax returns. You’ve seen ours, show us yours. Maybe there’s a reason for not asking or it’s already happened and I missed it.
Carrick,
Of course. This is the quality [characteristic] of a scientist, and you’re a scientist; that’s as it should be.
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If you want to stroll down the narrow, twisted lanes of my thinking, I’ll take you on a brief tour:
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DA’s use motive, method, and opportunity to establish guilt, when a crime has been commit. The trouble with politics is that in this day and age, the means of even discovering when a crime has been commit are compromised. The media is in bed with the DNC big time. WikiLeaks nothing burger is full of examples. Take this sad spectacle of this poor guy playing the game, clearly despising himself for what he’s doing, but doing it anyway. [Edit: I say it’s full of evidence. It’s still not the solid proof that you’d want. I’m willing to read between the lines, not everybody is.]
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How would we ever even know then? For proof to come to light, there’d have to be people inclined to bring it to light, and largely the reporters who once performed this investigative service for us are disinclined. Oh, not all of them. But it’s a probability thing, not many want to do this. Those who are so inclined are dismissable, take Veritas. The only people who are left are people with an axe to grind.
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Where does this leave me? Well, I don’t need to see a dog eating my lunch off the table to know a dog will eat my lunch off the table if the opportunity presents itself. If there is motive, method, and opportunity for politicos to do something, I assume they will do it. I don’t need evidence to know they’re going to actively take advantage of whatever opportunities they can to take power, it’s what they do. It’s what they’re there for.
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Maybe I’m nuts. Just the way I see it.
Carrick (Comment #153093): My take on this is that the Republican Party is in trouble right now– religious conservative platform simply doens’t appeal to a large enough slice of Americans for them to carry national elections.
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Agreed, if Republicans define themselves to be the religious right, they are history. The problem is even worse, they don’t define themselves to be anything. They can’t agree on anything, they have no common or shared values. Many would rather see Clinton elected than the wrong shade of “right”. Trump showed that all the Republicans are is a non-united bunch of splinter groups. Trump is a populist and he has shown that many voters are not happy, enough to win if only the Republicans didn’t help sabotage him.
mark bofill,
“I don’t need to see a dog eating my lunch off the table to know a dog will eat my lunch off the table if the opportunity presents itself. If there is motive, method, and opportunity for politicos to do something, I assume they will do it.”
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Humm… comparing politicians to dogs… brought a smile to my face. But you are right, most politicians don’t stick to their claimed ‘principles’, but rather adopt ‘situational principles’ as will best allow them to stay in office. Obama was against gay marriage until he was for it. Hillary was for the TPP agreement, until she was against it. All rather mercenary. Principled people don’t seem to become involved in politics very often.
SteveF,
Thank you. I struggled with the analogy for a minute because I’m pretty fond of dogs. But. ~shrug~ Can’t kid oneself about what they’ll do unsupervised.
Mark, Steve, I would compare politics to the clergy. There is always a noble angle to rationalize why you need to give me your money.
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My core view always comes back to Federalists 51
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The press supporting one political party that rules the country through one branch of government would be a corruption of the American republic, and effectively the end of Madison’s dream.
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A lot of people think we are close to a point of no return, including liberal law professors.
Loretta Lynch lectures foreign leaders on the insidious nature of corruption, the damage done by allowing anyone be above the law. You can’t make this stuff up. http://cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/ag-lynch-rails-against-corruption-undermines-citizens-belief-their-elected
Thanks for reminding me of Federalist 51 Ron. It’s been awhile!
You know, the more I think about it the more I’m starting to believe that if they were alive today, we’d call our founding fathers a bunch of conspiracy theorists.
I gotta go take my kid to the orthodontist…
SteveF: I guess it depends on what you mean by “principled”.
Politicians are meant to represent the will of their political constituents. That’s a pretty strong principle too.
If your constituent is in favor of gay marriage and against TPP, and it’s not an issue of moral imperative, don’t you have an obligation to represent those views?
Mark Bofill—thanks for your comments. I recognize of course the possibility of fraud, and the weakness of studies like this, which found 31 instances of voter fraud in 1 billion votes cast.
That weakness is only looking where the light is shining.
But I suspect we could use signal detection theory here and say, it’s pretty unlikely that on a scale of a presidential election that you could have wide-spread enough fraud to overturn the will of the people while being consistent with the small incident rate observed in that study, unless the elections are very, very close. (Part of this is the system we have is actually pretty resilient against isolated voter fraud, except in states where the election results are very, very close.)
The opposite side of the coin that you’re talking about, where people have a motive to do a certain thing, is people who lose look generally for an external reason why they lost, besides being rejected at the ballot.
If I had to unscientifically guess, I’d suggest about 50 to 1 claims of voter fraud fall on this side on the coin. What I’d have to say about that is, if all you worry about is the specter of voter fraud, and don’t worry about why your message is failing to resonate, you’re destined to always come in second place and spend a whole lot more time fretting about voter fraud.
Ron Graf:
It’s all a matter of perspective. I see you guys throwing every politician and bureaucrat you can under the bus because you didn’t get the legal outcome (a Clinton indictment) you wanted. That’s a form of corruption too.
Well spoken Carrick. Agreed.
Ledite:
I think that’s what we’re really seeing in this election on the RNC side—a search for a new identity beyond simply appealing to a vocal minority within the Republican party. What they’ve managed to do is abandon basically every principle they said they stood for, in selecting Donald Trump.
That’s the first step in assuming a new identity.
The question is what that new identity is….hopefully it’s something more than just pour gas on our democratic institutions and set them on fire, which is what Trump seems willing to do if he loses.
Jferguson, if Jeb Bush hadn’t run, I think Trump would not have won the primary. Trump got to look good by beating up Jeb, and even signaling how he is not like the last Republican president.
Ron, Carrick, the Al Smith dinner is generally worthless politically, and doesn’t make news. If anything, Trump gains from it, by having his attacks highlighted.
He would have gotten even more boos except people missed the joke about being ambassador to Iraq or Afghanistan as an attack on getting Libya ambassador killed.
The booing made his delivery worse. He had inappropriate attack on wikileaks revealing a public and private position(BOO) followed by inappropriate attack declaring that Hillary is pretending to not hate Catholics(BOO), which without the booing is a semi-OK joke.
Carrick, his support will evaporate when it’s clear from exit polls he lost.
MikeN:
I hadn’t thought of that. You may have something. I was astounded that Jeb crumbled so quickly. For his other faults, Trump certainly is skilled at accurately nailing someone with what looks like a definitive trait. “Low energy” is hard to beat. I’m not sure that’s a fault but plenty of other people did.
JFerguson, maybe I missed the specific debates, but I never noticed the ‘low energy’ line used directly. I thought Trump’s victory in the primaries came from -(summary)
First debate:
Jeb “I want you to apologize to my wife for your comments on immigration”
Trump “NO”
Jeb “OK”
and Vegas debate: “Oh yea, you’re real tough Jeb”.
I think this one is still available on CNN on demand with Comcast. If so, there is a part about halfway thru, where Jeb says You can’t insult you’re way to the presidency, and it looks like Trump is pondering it…
Third part was the rioting when Ted Cruz attacked Trump combined with the Zabruder film of Corey ‘assaulting’ the reporter.
Here it is. I think Trump should just run this as an ad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=HKQgrOV27X0
Hey BTW, I was on my phone earlier. I was agreeing to Carrick’s response to me, not necessarily Carrick’s response to Ron.
Mark Bofill—I’d predict that this is going to crash and burn for Trump if he loses, especially if he loses badly (which is what I anticipate).
j ferguson—I think Trump already has a reputation of lacking social grace. The Al Smith roast managed to reinforce that.
In fact, I don’t agree with Carrick’s response to Ron.
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I think there is indeed an appetite to see heads roll. Who really answered for operation Fast and Furious, or the IRS targeting scandal, or Benghazi, or the VA, or Hillary’s emails / server. Bill Clinton meeting with Loretta behind closed doors on her plane, while his wife was under investigation. Maybe others I’ve forgotten.
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Maybe somebody did answer for some of these things. But I think there’s a perception among Trump supporters (and possibly others) that our government and bureaucracies are corrupt, be this perception accurate or misguided.
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You can call it sour grapes, maybe that’s exactly what it is. But I don’t believe the grapes are sour merely because of Hillary’s impending coronation.
Crash and burn for Trump, yes. But our society isn’t going up in flames. Trump can go back to the Trump tower or whatever and pout all he likes, basically nobody is going to stay behind him once it’s really clear he really legitimately lost. Which is very probably what’s going to happen.
MikeN,
In one of the debates, or perhaps an early speech, Trump deemed Jeb “Low Energy” Of course this could be Trump’s take on “Gentleman”
Sorry Carrick, you said because of not getting Hillary’s indictment, and I was talking about her election. I’m still making the same point, but I apologize for getting this detail about what you were saying wrong.
I don’t think it’s corrupt of us to do this, I think we’re fed up with a system where we perceive nobody in the political class is ever held accountable.
Carrick, I thought the political game was supposed to be played such that the politician states upfront before an election where he/she stands on the issues. The voting public then decides whether that politicians stands on the whole are better than her/his opponent’s. The politician then holds or loses office based on those how well the voters support on average her/his principles
If the politician gets into office stating that he will do whatever the majority of his constituents prefer and regardless of any personal principles he might hold, then I guess one would have to wonder why this go between is needed and why would not a referendum or poll be held on the issues.
In the real world it actually works more like a politician will vote along party lines because that is how he got elected and particularly so in a primary race unless he is running in a voting constituency that is evenly divided and has a reasonably large independent portion of voters.
There is no doubt that Hillary changed her views on lots of things because she thinks it will garner her more votes and not on any principled basis and I guess, Carrick, you are saying that is what she should have done. Hillary and Trump are much alike in their populist approach to this election in saying things and promising things they think will help their vote count That comes across as very unprincipled vis a vis the politician having any principles unless one uses your definition that it is principled to follow the what you think the voting public wants. I would also suppose that a proper answer to a debate question put to a candidate about where they stand on given issues would be to keep repeating “with the people” or better “with the voters”.
Hillary also was revealed in the emails that she had a private face – evidently for campaign donations – and a public one for voters. When confronted with this in the second debate she did not deny but rather said that Lincoln also had two faces. I think defending that would require going beyond the voting with the people principle and perhaps, as Hillary defended, on the basis that she was doing it for the good of nation and the ends justify the means.
I get a kick out of the talk of the early demise of the Republican party by those who I suspect are into wishful thinking. The majorities below will surely diminish with a Donald Trump at the head of the ticket and maybe even dramatically but at the current time the Republican party has never been this in charge outside the presidency for a long time.
Did you hear much about the demise of the Democrat party based on these numbers? I have not. By the way I agree with most of the criticisms of the Republican party and would add many more, but surely by comparison I would have to say at the moment that it is the Democrat party that is chopped liver.
Number of state governors offices held:
Democratic (18) Republican (31) Independent (1)
Number of state legislators held:
Republicans hold 68 out of 98 partisan state legislative chambers
US Senate: 54 Senate seats are Republican while the Democrats have 44 Senate seats. Two seats are held by independents, who caucus with the Democratic Party.
US House:
247 Republicans and 188 Democrats
mark bofill–regarding Hillary’s failure to be indicted. I doubt we can see eye to eye here, so here’s just my views and I’m happy to move on:
I honestly think the Republicans were counting on an indictment so they wouldn’t have to face her in the general elections. In fact they spent something like $10,000,000 abusing their political power trying to mount a case against her to get her indicted, just to avoid having to run against her. And as you probably are aware, some Republicans even admitted that was the motive for the investigations.
I predict if you saw Chaffetz’s and Gowdy’s committees in that light, it would probably be harder for you to shed tears when what amounts to an abuse-of-the-constitution politically motived witch hunt fails. It’s impossible to argue that their focus was on their oversight responsibilities, because it spot-lighted on Clinton rather than on the State Department’s conduct in general, the way it should have been.
I trust the system to work. I know it fails at times, and I certainly am aware that the privilege class plays by different rules than schmucks like me. Certainly true for Clinton. Just as true for Trump of course, probably more so.
But at some level I think you have to trust the system. Sometimes the chips don’t fall the way you wanted, but that’s how the system works. I would have been equally happy if Comey had come out with a recommendation to prosecute. I am just as happy to accept his word that there isn’t a real case for prosecution and that the investigation was carried out without undue bias.
I think the Republicans are trying to destroy Comey now because he didn’t follow their lead. I see that as very damaging to our system of government too.
Apologies Carrick, I see I misunderstood what you were saying.
It’s all a matter of perspective, yes. That’s basically what I’m saying too.
[Edit: Cross post. And I agree with you about Comey. I said then, and will say now, I watched Comey testify and I buy his sincerity.]
[Edit2: I see I’m getting trigger happy. I’ll try to slow down a bit. :/ ]
Kenneth—I think the politician is supposed to work for us and represent everybody in the nation, not just those who voted for them, which is I think would happen in your model.
No, sorry. It’s got nothing to do with what I wish.
I wish for a strong Republican Party because it’s needed to oppose the Democratic Party. A healthy democracy needs a strong exchange of ideas, not one party imposing its will on the people.
What I said above specifically was:
In our system of government, if you can’t (ever) win national elections, you lose your voice in the SCOTUS too. I think a balance in the SCOTUS is needed for a healthy democracy too.
Mark Bofill:
Okay we do see eye-to-eye then.
I can expand slightly and say I understand why people, who aren’t just intent on winning elections, see problems with Clinton’s behavior.
I think she’s clever enough to have her own group of legal advisors whose job it is too keep otherwise ethically questionable behavior from turning into blatant violations of the law. I think that’s “business as usual” in Washington for Clinton, for Chaffetz, for Gowdy, and in NYC for Trump.
Carrick,
“Politicians are meant to represent the will of their political constituents. That’s a pretty strong principle too.”
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Sure, ‘the principle’ is the same as the ‘principle’ of being a whore. The issue is: if you vote for someone based on ‘the principles’ they claim they will support, and those ‘principles’ are worth little more than dog excrement, and they can (and will) change based on public opinion, then as a voter you have been deceived. IMO that is the problem with Washington politicians…and maybe politicians in general. It is the ‘whore mentality’ writ large. Certainly we should expect more from public servants than this.
Carrick: “I wish for a strong Republican Party because it’s needed to oppose the Democratic Party. A healthy democracy needs a strong exchange of ideas, not one party imposing its will on the people.”
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The democrats would have had a healthier candidate if they did not accept corruption as better than conservatism. You can’t tell us all we are suffering delusions when we see piles of evidence of the undermining of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, EPA and ATF. The house committee are long and expensive investigations because the executive gives zero cooperation. Citizen group FOIAs get responded to faster. It’s a continuous drip of evidence because it’s a coverup, not because it’s a fishing expedition.
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Now, on the other side, watching the Youtube that MikeN linked (thanks,) the Republicans would have a stronger candidate if there were not such an angry electorate regarding corruption. The debates were like negative ads against the GOP with angry adolescent fighting. Carson and Kasich were probably the only ones not interrupting and making false (or unfair) attacks. Cruz claimed Trump was partial birth abortion supporting liberal. I think that’s were Trump’s “Li-yn Ted” came from.
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I asked a while back why the Putin would be involved helping Trump. I think the aim is to keep the election as close as possible to split the country and undermine legitimacy of the USA. After all, Clinton would be laughed at if she tried to make the speech Loretta Lynch just gave on a foreign stage about the profound effects of corruption at the top.
Ron there certainly is a component that is detached from reality. No question. When you start seeing conspiracies in everything…maybe it’s time to look for different information sources.
SteveF, I largely view choice on basic issues as illusionary. There’s no prostitution involved. Most of these decisions get made in concert with the very large federal bureaucracy and with Congress of course.
There are certain places where political philosophy matters, like with abortion and gun control. But many topics there really isn’t going to be very much difference between which party is calling the shots.
If Trump had stuck to philosophical positions, like he did at the start of the third debate, I think he would’ve done much better. You don’t have to be a political wonk to argue over issues like those.
J Ferguson, Trump called Ben Carson ‘nice guy’ as soon as he got close, the same argument.
Ron, I suspect if Trump had to do it over again he would go with Sneaky Ted.
Trump clearly supported partial birth abortion in the late 90s, and not too many people take his statement of conversion seriously.
That said, he argued the pro-life case in debate harder than any other Republican nominee, perhaps ever.
SteveF,
I agree with your comments on Carrick’s “principle” that “Politicians are meant to represent the will of their political constituents.”
But I think the correct principle is that they are meant to represent the *interests* of their constituents. That can be a very different thing.
MikeN: “That said, he argued the pro-life case in debate harder than any other Republican nominee, perhaps ever.”
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And, the political expedient move would have been to ease off pro-life to pick up some college educated women. So it doesn’t make sense he is insincere. Ted was insurgent fighting the “Washington Cartel. To do that he there is not room for any stretching of truth.
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Carrick, it is hard for conservatives believe that obtaining a state photo ID, made free for those who have hardship, is asking too much, or is racist. On the other hand there were several Philadelphia precincts that voted 100.0% straight Democrat ticket in the 2012 election. One of those had over 100,000 votes. Please give me a scenario for this fact that does not involve corruption. Even if the voting machines were not marked, taped or tampered with I am envisioning buses of people that know nothing but of a community obligation to vote for a particular party. This type of organization could not happen without church, community organizers and government social workers all in lock step to control every mind and every finger in the community. This is unhealthy if not immoral. These people are fed propaganda about all conservatives being racists. Yes, this ensured the vote but to turn around and then blame conservatives for racial animosity is CORRUPTION.
Ron Graf,
100,000 votes in a single precinct?
Ron Graf: “there were several Philadelphia precincts that voted 100.0% straight Democrat ticket in the 2012 election. One of those had over 100,000 votes. Please give me a scenario for this fact that does not involve corruption.”
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You are very confused, Ron. In 2012, Obama got 100 percent of the vote in 59 of Philadelphia’s 1,687 voting divisions. That was a total of 19,605 votes. That is somewhat over 300 votes cast per division, compared to an average of about 400 votes per division for the city as a whole. Obama took over 85% of the vote in Philly. With such small divisions, 100% does not seem so improbable.
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“community obligation to vote for a particular party …. This is unhealthy”
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Edit: Source of data is http://twitchy.com/sd-3133/2012/11/12/fishy-all-votes-in-59-philadelphia-voting-divisions-went-to-obama/
I agree. But that is not fraud.
Ron Graf: “And, the political expedient move would have been to ease off pro-life to pick up some college educated women.”
I very much doubt that. Trump is not going to win over those voters just by being mealy mouthed on abortion. But he is at risk of losing a lot of votes from evangelicals who are normally solidly Republican. They *will* care that he argued strongly for the pro-life case. That was a smart move by Trump.
Okay, I made the mistake of going by memory. Should know better. The figures are 59 Phili “divisions” totaling 19,605 to zero. Snopes disclaims the conspiriacry by pointing out the same thing happened in Obama’s first election except it was only 57 divisions then. There are other major cities, including Cleveland, where this occurred as well.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/11/philadelphia_voter_fraud_is_it_possible_that_barack_obama_won_100_percent.html
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I stand by my point in my comment that this is not a healthy, normal or legitimate political result.
Carrick, what is it that Democrats are offering the inner cities that Republicans can’t? Cites, I would argue, do better under Republican Governors and Mayors. What political issue segregates the inner cities to be Democrats? (Not rhetorical.)
Ron, arguing against partial birth abortion and returning issue to states is winner for Trump.
Confirmation bias in action: 538 writer declares unprecedented for Trump to comeback. However, his chart shows similar gains by Republicans in the other elections with a Clinton. Somehow he jumped to Hubert Humphrey as Trump’s role model.
http://i2.wp.com/espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/enten-oct-polls-11.png?quality=90&strip=all&w=575&ssl=1
Trump could have said: “We do not need to overturn Roe v. Wade to end partial birth abortion, which that one has voted to for and I oppose, as do a majority of Americans.”
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This would have pivoted from the standard Roe v Wade trap and scored a positive comparison with Clinton. I know it’s easy here from the coach.
Carrick: I think the politician is supposed to work for us and represent everybody in the nation, not just those who voted for them
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That’s an ideal, not always achieved, but I would argue that those places or times when it has been most true have been those places or times where most of us would want to live. Those who pit factions of a country against each other are playing with fire. Majority rule is very dangerous if Carrick’s ideal is not met.
Mike M,
“But I think the correct principle is that they are meant to represent the *interests* of their constituents. That can be a very different thing.”
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The danger is that politicians will say one thing to gain election and do another when in office. Even if those politicians are acting in what they see as their constituents interests, they have still misled the voters; the voters are not 4 year olds who must be forced to receive a vaccination at the doctor’s office ‘for their own good’. Hillary and Obama are the best examples of this kind of elitist crap I know of. They are simply dishonest about their intensions to win election.
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Ledite,
“Majority rule is very dangerous if Carrick’s ideal is not met.”
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Of course, and the complicated structure and requirements of the Constitution were specifically designed (in part) to make ‘the tyranny of the majority’ less likely. Of course, that tyranny is the desired outcome of ‘progressives’. Should 50.1% be always allowed to impose their will on 49.9%? I don’t, but sadly, a great many people on the left think so.
SteveF,
I don’t think it takes 50%. Maybe more like 20%. My thinking is that 20% or so conceive this ‘great idea’ Maybe only a few of them actually understand the thing, and most of it’s ramifications. they then sell it to enough people to make it happen.
I thought the recent debacle with the legislation which would enable Americans to sue foreign governments a prime example.
I suppose it would be hard to concede that our best protection from tyranny is incompetence, but there it is.
SteveF wrote: “The danger is that politicians will say one thing to gain election and do another when in office. Even if those politicians are acting in what they see as their constituents interests, they have still misled the voters…”
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I agree. I did not mean to imply that politicians should be duplicitous. If they think the public is mistaken as to what serves their true interests, they should stand up for that and seek to change the public’s mind.
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I also agree about the necessity of checks and balances to keep a bare majority from imposing their will on everyone. The tyrannical elements on the left see that their chance to do that is within reach, and will be pushing hard to achieve that. Electing Hillary will further enable that, which is why I feel so strongly that she must be stopped. Even if that means Trump as president.
Mike M,
It appears from the emails and can probably be concluded from her public utterances over the years that Hillary has no idea what she wants. There’s an email in there somewhere with Hillary excoriating her staff for not inventing her core belief.
If you accept that, then I suppose you could then say that she would be an ineffective gatekeeper to protect us from the crazies. On the other hand, if she is indeed subservient to Wall Street, maybe you shouldn’t be so worried.
j ferguson,
I am not sure what you are saying, but if you really think that being subservient to Wall Street is nothing to worry about, then your opinion is probably worth nothing to me.
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We know what Hillary wants. She wants power. That alone is cause for concern. Combine that with the fact that she cares nothing for the constitution and exhibits no concern for those who are not her supporters, and she is indeed scary.
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That she may be clueless is no consolation. That just means that she will be the tool of Wall Street, the social justice warriors, the social engineers, and the unelected bureaucrats who run their departments like fiefdoms; all the while blundering deeper and deeper in the morass of the middle east and doing nothing effective on immigration, trade, terrorism etc.
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We should all be very worried.
Mike M,
Hillary seems cautious to a fault. My guess is that she will not do much once in office. I do agree that subservience to wall street is not necessarily a good thing, but ‘wall street’ isn’t entirely nuts, nor completely devoid of care for the interests of the country at large – mostly because they see that their interests and the country’s are frequently the same.
I’d like to see someone, likely a Republican, run who would significantly trim the bureaucracies including finding jobs for those displaced in the process, someone who could at least remember the names of those he’s selected to shut down, someone who would take on the public employee unions including teachers and any professional associations which negotiate salaries with the government, and while he/she is at it, try to cut back our runaway regulation. Disable (dis-enable?) regulations having sanctions which can be imposed by bureaucrats and whose enabling legislation allows no resort to the courts until the regulatory process is exhausted – along with your wallet.
I suspect that the frustration with professional politicians on the right in particular is that they send them off to Washington thinking they are going to do this stuff, but they don’t.
If anyone ever shows up who will seriously deal with what I’ve suggested above, I’ll pull our tumbril out of the garage and help.
I firmly believe that the country is split between people who do stuff and people who try to prevent stuff from being done.
And you’re right, I don’t worry about immigration – I’d like a lot more. Nor terrorism – I doubt that we can completely avoid it, and am also roundly unimpressed with the folks whose job it is to try to limit these events here in the states. My view on trade is probably completely nuts – if the stuff above isn’t too – but I would limit restrictions on trade to only the most egregious (and effective) predatory practices of our ‘partners’. The wealthier the rest of the world is the better off we’ll be.
You can’t sell then Chevies if they don’t have roads.
Mike M, I should add that the experience of the US auto industry with it’s unions somewhat parallels that of the government with their pubic employee unions – give them whatever it takes to keep them on the job and hope for the best in the future.
Except for Reagan.
Back to Hillary. Wouldn’t you think most of the support for Bernie was folks who just knew Hillary wouldn’t do anything?
and while were worrying ab out immigration, wall street, terrorism, aleppo, mosul, how about legislating the laws of physics?
I’ve gotta quit, the froth is making the keyboard too slippery to continue. sorry.
Reagan’s stand against the PATCO union is an example of courage to go against the paradigm of common practice in a way that set a new tenor for what many believe was the abuse of unions, using their status to negotiate beyond fair market value.
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Politics is a continuous bubbling cauldron. They key is lowering turbulence with evenhandedness. Dividing constituents and rationalizing corruption simply turns up the heat and leaves us all in danger of boil-overs.
j ferguson wrote: “Hillary seems cautious to a fault. My guess is that she will not do much once in office.”
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I wish I could believe that. But she was hardly cautious in Libya. Or when she talks about no fly zones in Syria or giving citizenship to illegals, or in designing HillaryCare. She is only cautious when it comes to things that might hurt Hillary. If she is elected president she will be very incautious in trying to establish a “legacy”.
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“… wall street is not … completely devoid of care for the interests of the country at large – mostly because they see that their interests and the country’s are frequently the same.”
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Uh, no. That used to be the case. But now Wall Street has gone totally global and open borders because *they* can profit from that; ordinary Americans be damned. That decoupling of the interests of the elites, including but not limited to Wall Street and the Washington power structure, is the basic reason that we have the problems that have led to Trump. If Trump is defeated, those interests will go on as before, until somebody *forces* them to change.
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“I’d like to see someone, likely a Republican, run who would significantly trim the bureaucracies … and while he/she is at it, try to cut back our runaway regulation.”
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Amen to that. Trump promises to do that, maybe he can deliver, maybe he can’t. Hillary promises the opposite. Hoping for an establishment Republican to do that is like waiting for the arrival of the Great Pumpkin. The bureaucracy in Washington is part of the whole power structure that is controlled by and benefits the establishment. Hell, even Reagan had virtually no effect on it. The only person who has had any effect is Newt Gingrich. He was reviled in his day the way Trump is now and is now supporting Trump.
Thanks Mike M, You’ve suggested some aspects to this that I need to think about some more.
~grin~
You know the Great Pumpkin only visits the most sincere pumpkin patch.
Making no point (not unusual), just saying. The Great Pumpkin reference made me smile. 🙂
Ron Graf:
Let’s not say “inner city”. Donald Trump lives in the inner city. The WTC is in the inner city. So is the Sears Tower. Most urban poor were displaced from the “inner cities” decades ago by a process called gentrification.
Let’s say just say “urban regions”, which typically have high poverty rates, which is what I think Trump really means.
I generally vote Republican because I tend to think their economic proposals are more business friendly. I think that there are a lot of people who would work if given the opportunity. Improved opportunity equals improved quality of life for people living in those urban regions. In states with healthy economic growth
That’s an argument that Trump could be making, that he’s not. It’s a philosophical argument, again something that you don’t need to be a political wonk filled to the brim with the latest statistics to make.
Unfortunately instead he opens his mouth, and ignorant nonsense falls out. (We’ve all heard it, so there’s no reason to summarize it here, I think. This does a good job though.)
That’s a bit of a digression, but it’s important—Trump doesn’t have any clue how to address urban poverty. He doesn’t really his other proposals are addressing it to an extent. He could even be talking about how liberal social programs to address poverty have generally made the problem worse. How those programs have created generational poverty.
You have a Republican candidate who is so completely ignorant of what he’s talking about that he engages in huckerisms and comes across as a phony, when in fact, his own party’s platform already contains the nucleus of the economic programs that would benefit the urban poor.
If I were a die in the wool Republican, I’d probably break my jawbone from clenching my teeth over that one.
Trump does have a clue as to how to address urban poverty. It is called economic growth. He has extensive tax, regulatory, and trade proposals to promote growth. Except for the last, his proposals are consistent with mainstream Republican proposals. He also supports school choice. The people who suffer the most from monopoly public schools are the poor since they get the worst public schools and have no alternative. He also strongly opposes illegal immigration. Who suffers most from excessive immigration of low skill workers? Domestic low skill workers. That would be the poor.
Mike m., could you link these extensive proposals? Not rhetorical. all I find are a bunch of short vague clips on his website.
markbofill,
Yeah, the Trump web site sucks. Sad, really, since he could use that to help dispel the idea that he is a lightweight. I am basing my statement on my reading of news reports over the last several months, including reporting on at least one major economic speech that he gave. But I don’t save such links. Here are a couple I managed to find:
http://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2016/10/18/the_trump_trade_doctrine_a_path_to_growth__budget_balance.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-trump-would-stimulate-the-us-economy/2016/09/23/b889458e-80ef-11e6-b002-307601806392_story.html?utm_term=.06087db80607
Thank you, will review
Mike M, As I said above, I do think so the Republican agenda addresses it.
Based on what he actually says, I don’t think there’s much evidence that Donald Trump actually knows what’s in his own party’s platform. I presume you don’t need me to quote examples of it.
Carrick,
I never said anything about the Republican platform. I doubt Trump cares about it. There is no reason that he should be different than other presidential candidates in that regard.
I think Trump is aware of tax and regulation policies to produce growth, as well as the crime issues he saw in New York.
The funniest summary of the presidential candidates I have seen.
“More fun in the Indispensable Nation”
http://fredoneverything.org/ready-ronald-mcdonald-or-lucretia-borgia-in-the-long-run-we-are-all-dead/
Clinton created the conditions that led to the 2008 crash. A bunch of wall street types should have gone to jail over that. See The Big Short. Obama promised change. What do we get? More Clinton. We could have just skipped Obama.
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Bernie connected with the young metro idealistic set who want a progressive future. I’m afraid they are going to be disappointed with Clinton. What will the US look like in 20 years? Like Mexico now. Call me a cynical
Carrick: “If I were a die in the wool Republican, I’d probably break my jawbone from clenching my teeth …”
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You and I are closer than I thought in general philosophy.
Although I am more a libertarian I am indeed clenching my teeth at Trump’s lack of communication skill. He could just borrow from Ronald Reagan: “The American people are not under-taxed. The government over-spends.” Or JFK: “A rising tide lifts all boats.”
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My biggest concern is strengthening checks and balances and the transparency that would work to cleanse natural corruption. Just as businesses often focus on eliminating competition, and thus need policing to protect markets, political parties need policing to protect the citizenry. Trump not only says that is his main mission, he is also not allied with any political machinery or special interests that would prevent him from pursuing his goal. That he is personally unappealing is actually just another check that would prevent him from gaining too much influence. And the legacy media would be certain to keep him unappealing and do their best to skewer him as they did Reagan and Bush.
cynic. There is a problem, as the jobs leave the country, except for service jobs and professions and some others. Is Trump the only one who sees the real problems?
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Here is a good explanation of the rise of populism from a person who sees it as evil and who lives in Sweden.
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https://www.thelocal.se/20161019/are-we-just-going-to-let-half-the-country-die
Re: Voter Suppression and Voter Fraud
Several comments above dealt with these issues. I think a lot of people frame the issues incorrectly.
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First, I don’t think it is useful to haul every barely conscious, unmotivated person to the polls. I want to make clear that I fully support the right of any person, no matter how stupid or uninformed (and there are many that fit this description on both sides of the fence.), to vote and I would make it convenient for these and other motivated people to vote.
On the other hand, I don’t think a high turnout is necessarily a good thing. Anyone who has watched David Letterman or Jay Leno knows there are many ignorant voters on both sides of an issue. So, going to great efforts to get someone who thinks China is in Europe or who doesn’t know what legislation is, isn’t a positive thing to me. On the other hand, voting should be made convenient for anyone to vote whether informed or not, if that person has some motivation to vote. In my mind, it is a reasonable policy to make it convenient for minimally motivated voters to vote, but the goal should not be to get everyone to vote no matter how unmotivated.
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The reason I bring this up is all of the faux outrage about minimal checks on the identity of voters. There should be some form of ID when voters go to the polls. We have a long history of voter fraud in the US (think Chicago), and if there are no checks then I believe it is virtually certain there will be voter fraud. See for instance, https://patriotpost.us/posts/45325 where a Democrat said that people were bused around from polling place to polling place to vote. If a state wants people to register to vote 2 or 3 weeks ahead of time, it is within the State’s right to do so. If a State allows same day registration, that is also its right (although not a good idea in my mind).
Finally, the Left always says it is concerned with Voter IDs being used to improperly prevent minorities from voting. However, I never see any evidence. Massive voter fraud is a disaster waiting to happen unless there are some minimal controls.
JD
Ron Graf: “My biggest concern is strengthening checks and balances … Trump not only says that is his main mission, he is also not allied with any political machinery or special interests that would prevent him from pursuing his goal. That he is personally unappealing is actually just another check …”
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I agree with that assessment. If Trump is elected, I think it more likely that he will fail due to the opposition of entrenched interests than that he will damage the republic by grabbing excessive personal power.
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I am not so sure about Trump being a poor communicator. If he were, he would not have wiped the floor with the likes of Bush, Rubio, and Cruz. I think he has a very different style of communication from standard issue politicians. It works well for some people; they tend to be crazy enthusiastic for Trump since he speaks to them. It does not work so well for others, me included. It took me a while to learn to hear what he was saying. I probably would not have made the effort if I were not so repelled by Clinton.
I disagree with Trump that losing jobs to globalization is the key issue; it’s not being able to create new jobs. As long as we can reignite small business we can soak up the domestic labor therefore we must create an environment where they can flourish.
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Idea: The Small Business Administration could get out of the making bad loans business and instead by an initiator or and overseer of non-profit businesses designed to aid for profit businesses with startup, financing, accounting, staffing, regulatory consulting, vendor sourcing and marketing.
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The greater the number of business opportunities equals not only greater wealth but greater Independence. Government bureaucracies do not like policing large numbers of small players. They prefer large organizations where they can trust them to police themselves like BP did signing their own safety inspections on the Deep Water Horizons oil rig. The cities seem to be resistant to Uber and Lift when they were quite comfortable with un-affordable taxis, for example.
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Clinton has promised to help small business; so why don’t I believe her? I don’t even trust that she understands what motivates hard work and risk taking even if I did believe her. Campaigning for socialized medicine shows a misplaced faith in government and contempt for private enterprise. For example, if the VA hospitals advertised that they were available to the general public would their doors be bursting with customers? I doubt it.
Mike M:
She wasn’t/isn’t the decision maker in any of these recommendations. It’s much different when you are. I think the only place we’ve seen her where she is decision-maker is in her campaigns.
So I’ll stick with cautious.
j ferguson,
I was trying to think of how to better explain what I see as the flaw in your argument, when I saw that Ross Douthat did it for me: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/23/opinion/sunday/the-dangers-of-hillary-clinton.html
Short version: Hillary will be cautious in the sense that she will not deviate far from elite groupthink. But elite groupthink can still lead to great folly.
Hah,
Mike M, very convincing. Thanks.
Alright. I’m not feeling lucky enough to risk quatloos I don’t have on LENR investment schemes, but I’m willing to put 5 quatloos against this. I’ve been looking at Nate Silver’s 538 Election Forecast, and in particular the graph of how the forecast has changed, and me and my five quatloos say this: IFF the DNC and media have emptied their clip against Trump; if they have no more sensational revelations that kick Trump’s feet out from under him, and IF he can manage to avoid self inflicted injuries for the next 17 days, then come Nov 8’th I predict Nate Silver will give Trump between a 1/4 and a 2/5 chance of winning the White House.
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I don’t actually have any quatloos, having never bet on monthly temps to the best of my recollection. Certainly I never won if I did. But I’ll settle with the Triskelion people later… 🙂
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Look at the cyclical nature of the data. All things being equal, I’d think Trump is going to pickup 4 points a week / narrow the gap by 8 points a week. He’s going to be around a 1/3 chance in 17 days. If he doesn’t fall off a cliff again.
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He’s still going to lose. Probably. But I don’t think the odds are going to be as overwhelming then as they are today. Unless he does something remarkably stupid or Hillary does something remarkably damaging.
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Anyways, there’s my prediction for the record.
Just saw Weiner, the documentary, on Showtime. Unbelievable. If you cringe easily don’t watch. For those not following, Anthony Weiner is the husband of Huma Abiden, who is HRC’s top aid and the one recently quoted in Wiki Leaks handling the 12M donation from Morocco last year that HRC set up. Weiner was a rising star in congress until he got caught texting a picture of his bulging underwear to a female admirer. He was cut lose by the party leadership after he finally admitted it was his underwear. After resigning from congress and he and Huma going through a year of therapy he threw is hat in the ring to run for Mayor of NYC. He allowed a documentary camera into his home and office to record his come back. As a fly on the wall one gets to see how a campaign begins from the rental of office space to the parades of thousands of cheering supporters. He was doing great. There is no body quicker on their feet verbally or more expressive of their passion than Weiner, truly a master politician.
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But if there is one thing you just can’t quite talk your way out of is getting caught texting pictures of your privates again. This time it was the full monty, the whole enchilada –and including digitally enshrined text dialogue supplied to the press by the online porn model partner.
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Weiner took it like a bump in the road. He convinced Huma to support him and ride it out. I won’t say any more. It’s too painful.
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They were together still until this summer when he was caught again. She left him the next day.
Ron, I didn’t realize this was the third time for Anthony. He ran for mayor AFTER being busted?
J Ferguson, all of those things are Hillary decisions. Libya was intended to be the centerpiece of her foreign policy accomplishments.
HillaryCare was what she led for many months. The other two are the recommendations of her campaign, to which she committed. No one forced her to do so.
Regarding voter fraud, I thought it was scarcely credible that such things still occur on a large scale in developed democracies. But the comment above by JD seems shocking – not just if true, but if possible.
In the uk, to vote you have to be on the register of electors. You get a polling card in advance of the vote (this isn’t necessary to vote, but I always take mine to the polling station). At the polling station you’re asked for your name and confirm your address. You’re crossed off the list of electors at that point. You get your voting slip and off you go to the booth to make your mark.
There is not the slightest chance of massive on-the-day fraud here. (What allegations of voting fraud occur generally relate to postal votes.) Is the US system that you just walk up and identify yourself as an eligible voter with no checks? Makes no sense.
MikeN,
Hillary ideas maybe, recommendations maybe, but decisions? No. Obama’s. Seems to me he didn’t always take her recommendations, so I’d say that would make him the decider.
Mellowed somewhat by Mike M’s Ross Douthat quote, I still suspect that if she is going to be the decider, she may be more cautious.
MikeN,
Supposing that someone would recommend a course of action they might not themselves take were they in charge is probably a reach. I’ve seen it, though, in my career where guys who had been fairly aggressive at lower levels became far more conservative when they got to the top. One of them recognized it, too.
Jit: “At the polling station you’re asked for your name and confirm your address.”
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So what is to stop you from getting a list of people who you know won’t be voting (because they are dead or have moved) and going from one polling station to another, casting one vote at each station?
What is to stop a resident non-citizen from getting on the register?
The above are real questions. The main issues in the U.S. seems to be the lack of a suitable mechanism to remove people from the list of registered voters and poor vetting of people being added to the list.
j ferguson: “I still suspect that if she is going to be the decider, she may be more cautious.”
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If elected, Hillary will have no choice but to make decisions. The question is whether she will make good decisions. It is important to remember that cautious is not the same thing as safe; an overly cautious driver is a traffic hazard.
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Mere caution often leads to half measures, and half measures are often dangerous. Like destabilizing Gaddafi with no plan for what comes next. Or waffling about Assad. Or drawing a red line with no intention of enforcing it. Or seeking a reset with Putin on the assumption that if we play nice, he will play nice. Etc. Hillary has a pattern. It is a very dangerous pattern.
Mike M,
I agree about Hillary’s foreign approach and about the hazard of her caution which is my principal reason for wishing she was running against someone else. But I think what I read here is that many of us are worried about domestic innovation, and here, I think her caution is our protection.
On the other hand, her handling of issues which right now are over the horizon could be even more problematic. Maybe autonomous cars and trucks won’t hit us before 2020, but whenever they do, someone is going to have deal with the resulting unemployment which could be massive and I suppose more monolithic (right word?) in the sense that all of the displaced will be either truck drivers or cab drivers. I don’t think we’ve ever had anything like that before with such a crisp demography.
It seems funny now that in the ’90s I used to talk to Russian cab drivers in NY about how difficult it would be to outsource their jobs. Of course a lot of them were very bright, well educated and trying to get their English up to a level where they could make their way in the math-based, and engineering endeavors they were otherwise qualified for – so maybe a transitional cohort.
j ferguson,
You wrote: “But I think what I read here is that many of us are worried about domestic innovation, and here, I think her caution is our protection.”
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Are you kidding me? Have you looked at her platform? (not so much rhetorical as incredulous) She wants the government to take over health care, higher education, etc. She wants open borders. She has implied that she wants the government to regulate religion (I am only exaggerating a little here). Nothing cautious there. In practice, she will be “cautious” by taking half measures. For example, she won’t actually open the borders, she will just give government benefits and, if possible, citizenship to the illegals already here while not taking the measures needed to keep that from being a big draw for further illegal immigration. All of her policies are disasters waiting to happen. Caution might save us from some of her worst ideas, but she can and will do massive damage.
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Trump understands risk management. That makes him a hell of a lot safer than cautious, crooked Hillary.
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“Maybe autonomous cars and trucks won’t hit us before 2020”
95% of what you read about autonomous vehicles is hype. They *might* be available for certain limited applications by that time. But it will be at least another decade before they are available for general purposes, and that is not a sure thing. Then it will another 20-30 years to replace the all the non-self-driving vehicles. And even then, cab and truck drivers won’t be all out of work since they don’t just drive.
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“but whenever they do, someone is going to have deal with the resulting unemployment which could be massive … I don’t think we’ve ever had anything like that before with such a crisp demography.”
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We’ve had that happen dozens, if not hundreds, of times.
Mike M: I just don’t see how that is going to be a significant number of voters. Crikey, are you seriously saying that someone is impersonating dead people? (I’m not sure how fast dead folks get removed from our electoral roll.) In theory someone could pretend to be me and vote. But then when I go to vote and can’t because I’ve “already voted”, massive red flags would go up. How would anybody know who has moved away? These things are possible, but I find it hard to believe there could be the numbers to affect a result.
MikeN, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/29/anthony-weiner-just-blew-his-a-second-chance-at-a-second-chance
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jit, the USA system sounds very similar to the UK’s and we had no major problems with fraud for many decades. The trouble started due to the “community organizers” movement invented by Saul Alinsky and documented in his 1971 book Rules for Radicals. Historically the poor communities have a lower turn-out than suburban. And, these communities represent a source of large blocks of pure Democrat votes. So organizers like the young Barack Obama go the local church leaders and social workers and get whole community blocks to register and then on election day ride a Democrat hired bus to the polls.
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All that is perfectly legal. However, it leaves great temptation to go a step further and offer people breakfast or other enticements to participate. It also easy to register people to vote that are ineligible to register. States vary on what is required but the system is porous. One step further is to take advantage of the stale registrations of people that have moved or are dead. It is riskier to get caught but there is traditionally a low enforcement or punishment. Ohio, an evenly split state that is often among the deciders for presidential elections, cracked down after some fraud was found in 2012’s election, taking ~2M off the registers. Although they were mostly dead people and those who moved. Even so, the Democrats sued the state to put them back on the register. This recent progressive article shows the Dems won the suit on appeal but does not mention if the dead people are going to be restored to the register.
Jit,
There is a big argument going on about this, I think, but it generally only gets fringe coverage. Here’s a link to somebody who argues there are 4 million dead or ineligible voters on the rolls. Hillary says there are 11 million ‘undocumented’, and of course in [American] English that’s pronounced ‘illegal’; they aren’t supposed to be voting. She has the Dreamers out there registering immigrants. It’s all very clean and innocent of course; I’m sure those people are scrupulously following the rules. Yes. Well. ahem..
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Now, in my wacky little world, I’m less worried about physical voter fraud and more worried about electronic fraud. I think that’s easier to pull off on a scale that makes a tactical difference in the Electoral College vote tally. But I don’t make clear and persuasive arguments because my tin foil hat is somewhat oversized and it tends to slip down over my face, muffling my voice and so on.
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~shrug~ Who knows.
I’m sort of interested in figuring out how the ‘undocumented’ affect polls. I’d suspect that it’s harder to weed them out of poll data than it is to weed them out of the voting booth.
Mike M,
I don’t take political platforms seriously.
Maybe you could share an example of a worker cohort almost completely, rapidly, and visibly supplanted either by automation or industrial change? And without similar jobs in another industry to move into. I’d say in a ten year window, not the 100 plus involved in moving off the farm.
Sure, it will take years to put most of the truck drivers into other situations, but once the first fleet of over-the-road autonomous trucks hits the highway it should be obvious to everyone driving for a living what’s in the cards.
Same thing is likely to happen in aviation. FedEx flew an unmanned MD-11 Memphis to Prestwick some years ago. Autonomous airplanes are a lot easier than vehicles which will cope with traffic.
I think autonomous aircraft were even within my personal grasp – software, control systems, airframe, the whole thing, but with 12 inch wingspans. it’s what i’m spending my dotage doing.
I know a lot more about the issues than when I began a year ago. My guess is, for me, working alone, with a lot of web input, maybe 5 years to something that will take-off by itself, climb to 100 feet, fly a pre-loaded pattern, and land where intended suitable sensors, and accelerometers cost very little, great gps chips cost $17 quantity one, barometric sensors are $30, sufficiently capable microcontrollers are less than $50. servos are cheap.
Sure there is a lot of hype about the robotic revolution but my guess is significant impacts will be felt in the next 10 years.
J Ferguson,
Drones are cool, and the tech for hobbyists is reasonably priced. I’m jealous. I hope to be doing that myself at some point when I have more time. 🙂
jit,
There are 1.8 million dead people registered to vote in the U.S. and 2.8 million people registered in more than one state. Easily enough to affect the result.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/us/politics/us-voter-registration-rolls-are-in-disarray-pew-report-finds.html?_r=0
Figuring out who those people hard is not easy, but can certainly be done if you put in enough work. The Democrats are spending over a billion on this campaign; a small part of that buys a lot of labor. And nobody knows how many non-citizens are registered.
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Dead people voting is an old tradition in many parts of the U.S., most famously in Chicago, but many other places as well. One does not hear about it so much these days. Maybe there is less of that due to the decline of political machines, or maybe they are just more discrete.
Regarding the dead voters: in the uk, they update the roll every year. You get a letter that says “here are the people registered to vote at your address,” with instructions to amend. So if a voter dies today, then they will presumably be removed from the register when the next tenant of the property gets the annual update mailshot. This obviously works for people moving away too.
I believe we had trouble a few elections ago with over-registration of fake voters: e.g., terraced houses with twelve adults in them, etc. As far as I know that isn’t a problem now. The biggest thing seems to be political agents helping people to fill in postal voting forms (and then taking the forms away to post – presumably binning any that voted for the ‘wrong’ candidate).
Last week we went to visit Dunwich on the Suffolk coast, which was one of the famous “rotten boroughs” of the Victorian times. Dunwich was more or less washed away in the 13th century but continued to have an MP, maybe two, with a population of next-to-naught, while cities like Birmingham had no MPs.
I think what I was trying to get to was: this is a problem that should be easy to fix.
mark bofill:
It’s my understanding many polls start with registered voter lists.
Are you still holding out hope Trump’s polling numbers are way off?
Hope springs eternal Carrick, but no. I don’t really think so.
Jit: “I think what I was trying to get to was: this is a problem that should be easy to fix.”
I strongly agree. It should not be all that hard to set up a system such that only those who are entitled to vote do and no one entitled to vote is denied that right. It will cost something, but not much considering what is at stake.
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But as JD Ohio points out in his excellent comment (#153175), the left screams about any attempt to increase integrity of the voting lists. And the courts back them up. So little gets done. I would add that the right is far from faultless here, since Republican officials in some states have been known to rather cavalierly strike people from the lists.
Carrick,
No, what was really going on in my mind was [that I was] thinking about electronic voter fraud. I know precious little about exit polls and have been trying to read up on how it’s done in my spare moments. This disclaimer duly uttered, it seems to me that the weakness in electronic voter fraud is that the exit polls wouldn’t match the vote. Unless the exit polls are similarly vulnerable to electronic attack. Even if exit polls are vulnerable, it gets harder.
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So how could an attacker manipulate exit polls? Does (maybe I should say ‘would’) an attacker need a certain amount of physical fraud to soften the discrepancy, or are exit polls immune immune to physical fraud as well? I don’t really know, but I’m trying to educate myself about it in my spare moments. When I’m not blabbing here. 🙂
Jit: “These things are possible, but I find it hard to believe there could be the numbers to affect a result.”
What is going on in the United States is that there are many opportunities for voter fraud, but so far, as far as we know, over the last 40 years there has not been massive voter fraud. In the late fifties and early sixties, it was well known that there was massive voter fraud in Chicago. Now, any attempt to make minimal protections available to prevent voter fraud is claimed to be discrimination against minorities. I believe that just because voter fraud on a massive scale has not happened recently, it doesn’t mean it will not happen in the future. In fact, with virtually no controls, I believe it is virtually certain to occur. The left doesn’t care about the massive voter fraud because the left thinks it would benefit. Also it is easy to state that there is no massive voter fraud when nobody’s looking for it and when it is very difficult to check.
JD
Jit: “This is a problem that should be easy to fix.”
To the left, this is not a problem but an opportunity.
JD
mark bofill: “This disclaimer duly uttered, it seems to me that the weakness in electronic voter fraud is that the exit polls wouldn’t match the vote.”
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Such a mismatch actually happened in the 2004 election in a number of states, most dramatically in Ohio. The exit polls said that Kerry won Ohio (and therefore the election) but the machines said that Bush won by a bit over 2%.
JD–the only thing I’d add to that is balancing the issue of voter fraud is that of disenfranchisement through stricter voter id laws. Naturally I think we need better voter id laws, but I don’t think it should come at the expense of disenfranchisement at a much larger scale than the suspected level of fraud itself.
I would imagine both sides are equally paranoid about the other side stealing elections, so everything else being equal, so I would guess that both sides likely would prefer stricter controls.
I think the real concern from the left about voter id laws is they have more to lose from disenfranchisement (which predominantly affects lower income people, who primarily vote Democrat). The right seems to glom onto the voter id laws, at times, as a means of reducing the number of votes from this primarily Democrat voting block. A good example of that is North Carolina’s recently struck down voter id law.
Because of the distributed nature of the voting process, it is virtually impossible to rig a national election through a centrally-controlled conspiracy.
But on the other hand, it’s not that difficult to rig elections through voter suppression, and unfortunately, America has a long history of this. So personally, while I tend to identify more with the right side of US politics, I am deeply skeptical of the motives of people who write voter id laws that do many things other than just make it harder to fraudulently vote.
Carrick, all three judges were Democrats. Without more, I have no reason to trust their conclusions. Over the last 30 years, I know of no voter ID laws that have operated to actually restrict eligible voters from actually voting. The so-called voter suppression is, as far as I know at this time, a myth. if you want to see an example of a very biased judge ruling on a similar issue, look up Shira Sheindlin and stop and frisk in NYC.
JD
Hi Mike M.
I finally found a machine in the house which hadn’t exhausted its ten free looks at the NYT. The Douthat piece is excellent and I agree with it in every detail.
thanks again.
JD Ohio—I don’t buy your argument of course. You seem to be arguing that don’t have to even look at the judgement to decide whether it’s unfair, merely at the party affiliation of the judges.
There’s plenty of evidence in this case that the Republican legislators conspired to disenfranchise black voters, between the ID law requirements which preferentially disenfranchised black voters (and based on the emails of the Republican legislators selected precisely to do this), and the extraordinary scale of the gerrymandering that was implemented in redistricting by the North Carolina Republican legislature.
For example here’s infamous 1st and 12th district, drawn by a Republican legislature. It’s hard for me to imagine that any sane person would look at the 12th and not see “a thumb on the scales” there.
As I see it, gerrymandering, whether it is done by Republicans or Democrats, is voter rigging at its core. It’s designed to insure that some votes are not counted with the same weight as other votes.
I assume you aren’t talking about Jim Crow laws being a myth.
There are at least three studies out there which demonstrate voter id laws have had a voter suppression effect. I can find and link them if you want.
The link to the gerrymandering is broken (and for some reason the edit button disappeared immediately).
Here is the article I took that figure from.
And here’s the original link again
Also Here’s a WaPo summary of 83-page judgment against the State of North Carolina.
Also, here’s a geographic study on gerrymandering.
Three of the “most contorted” districts in the US are in North Carolina. I doubt that’s driven purely by geography, as it is for Hawaii District 2.
Carrick,
Your link about how hard it would be to commit voter fraud stands up a number of possible straw men, at least with respect to electronic voter fraud.
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Tamper resistant seals, and number of machines, wow sounds impossible doesn’t it. How are the controls for the guys programming the devices in the first place. Think programmers can’t hide Easter eggs from other programmers, you ought to think again, I speak from personal experience there. How are the controls for the guys loading the devices. Got controls for guys doing maintenance. The bit about making a program sleep, don’t make me laugh, as if there’s something hard about that.
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I’m sure it’s not a walk in the park. [But] These bland assurances that it’s impossible ring pretty hollow to me though. I’ll go this far. It doesn’t look like voter fraud is going to be necessary. There are those who argue that the propaganda about it is working well for Trump though.
Put another way, everybody always thinks their systems are secure. History is full of examples. What we [software guys] are coming to realize is that this is a lot harder than one might naively think. Systems don’t still get hacked today because computer programmers are a bunch of incompetent slackers, they get hacked because it’s really a lot harder than you’d think to make systems secure.
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At least that’s what I think. I don’t specialize in software security, although I’ve become casually acquainted with some aspects over the years.
A last note. Do you think the guys loading the device even know what they’re loading? [Edit: rhetorical. My answer, I doubt it.] It’s a binary file, most likely. It’s not even human readable source. Same for the maintenance guys.
[Edit: alright. I’ll stop. There are methods for controlling this of course; md5 hash digests and such. Are they being used? Beats me! Now I’ll really stop.]
mark bofill—Here’s the relevant text about tampering with the machines:
I don’t see any straw man arguments here.
My take home from the link is that you’d have to individually tamper with each machine, and that hardware, software and ballet information is different across each precinct, more so than necessarily how difficult each machine was to tamper with.
So it’s not so much that each machine is not-unbreakable, but that there are multiple machines, and with multiple pieces of software, and different ballot configurations that your pool of vote ninjas would have to content with. So you need a massive centrally-controlled conspiracy with a huge amount of coordination to effect election tampering at that scale. And you’d have to pull this off in an incredibly short amount of time, with a very large pool of vote ninjas (American ninjas … because Japanese ninjas are so readily detected, as the movies make clear).
Carrick North Carolina Case:
I have read the case and agree with about 80% of the claims that there were unreasonable restrictions. For instance, that welfare type IDs were not allowed. I would allow them and some form of same day registration.
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However, here is what Judge Motz who partially dissented said:
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“Thus, we are faced with a statute enacted with racially discriminatory intent, amended before ever implemented in a way that may remedy that harm, and a record incomplete in more than one respect. Given these facts, I would only temporarily enjoin the photo ID requirement and remand the case to the district court to determine if, in practice, the exception fully remedies the discriminatory requirement or if a permanent injunction is necessary. In my view, this approach is that most faithful to Supreme Court teaching as to injunctive relief.”
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Thus the Court majority essentially invalidated remedial legislation without even looking at the record. Additionally, the trial court (federal district judge) found that the voting changes were Constitutionally valid and four justices of the Supreme Court voted to stay the Appeals Court decision. Four agreed not to stay it. With one Supreme Court seat vacant the Appeals Court decision was given validity. This is not the simple black and white issue that you think it is. Here is a link to the Appeals Court Decision. https://www.bing.com/search?q=north+carolina+v.+louis+duke+federal+court+of+appeals&pc=MOZI&form=MOZLBR
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Again, with the judiciary being so politicized, I personally give little credence to the factual basis of any court decision whether by Democratic leaning or Republican leaning judges. You have to look at the underlying facts. My basic view is that it is absolutely necessary to have voter ID and if that affects minority turn-out in some small way, that is the price to be paid for valid elections. (I should add that some laws permit people to file a statement as to why they don’t have an ID, which I am fine with)
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Additionally, it should be noted that the majority of the Court of Appeals stated: “Our conclusion does not mean, and we do not suggest, that any member of the General Assembly harbored racial hatred or animosity toward any minority group.”
JD
Carrick: Gerrymandering
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Gerrymandering has been a component of American politics for over 200 years and is mostly a red-herring pertaining to my arguments in favor of voter ID. Unfortunately, I think there is no practical way to deal to prohibit it. Here is what Philip Burton (California Democrat) and the Democrats in general did in California:
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“Democratic Congressman Phillip Burton and new State Assembly Speaker Willie Brown devised a redistricting plan that would result in five new safe Democratic seats.[5] Congressman Burton would boast that the bizarrely shaped map, which included a 385-sided district, was “My contribution to modern artâ€.[6] Reacting to what was called “one of the most notorious gerrymanders†of the decade,[7] Republicans successfully placed a veto referendum on the primary ballot and California voters overwhelmingly rejected the legislature’s redistricting plans in the June 1982 election, the same election that enacted the California Constitution’s Victim’s Bill of Rights.[8]
A majority of the California Supreme Court justices, however, had been appointed by Governor Jerry Brown and a sharply fractured court ordered the rejected districts to be used in the November election because only it was “practicable”.[9] Democrats won 60% of the congressional seats despite only taking 49.9% of the statewide vote.[10] Democrats still lost the statewide elections, losing the governorship and incumbent Governor Jerry Brown losing his U.S. Senate bid to San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson. Governor Brown responded by calling an extraordinary legislative session, amending a previously passed bill with the redistricting plan that had just been rejected by the electorate, and signing the redistricting plan into law hours before being replaced by Republican George Deukmejian.” See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redistricting_in_California
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So, any whining by the Left about gerrymandering is completely hypocritical.
JD
Carrick,
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These machines don’t each run a different, custom, hand written piece of software. They are running the same code. That there are many different types of voting machines with different systems does not increase security. It simply provides more separate opportunities for attacks.
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Who checked the code. How does the code get on the machine. How is the code on the machine maintained. If a defect is discovered and a patch is pushed out, how is the patch installed. Who checks this in each case.
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The article doesn’t address any of these issues. Each is an opportunity for the system to be compromised.
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My bet – there is probably a relatively small group of software engineers, QA guys, and technical support guys for each type of machine. There is some process these guys work by. If there is any flaw in their process, or any laxity in following their process, there is opportunity for attack. If there is any corrupt actor in their midst, there is opportunity for attack. Do these guys take and pass security investigations. What is the level of trust.
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If you want to argue that a conspiracy has to affect every voting machine in every state to be effective, ~shrug~ I don’t agree with you at all. There are swing states. There are precincts / locations that are more important than others.
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Electronic voter fraud can be viewed as a potential tool to affect the outcome of elections without assuming that it is the only tool, or that it has to be completely pervasive in order to have an impact.
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I don’t buy it.
Carrick: “So you need a massive centrally-controlled conspiracy with a huge amount of coordination to effect election tampering at that scale.”
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Sounds like something perfectly suited to Hillary Clinton’s skills to me.
JD
Carrick,
This can’t possibly be so. There can not possibly be a unique machine running a unique piece of software at each precinct.
But even if we believed this absurdity, it still wouldn’t make the system secure. All this does is multiply little local opportunities for electronic fraud beyond any conceivable hope of systematic management.
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But this isn’t the case. It’d have to be our national industry, designing and programming all of these unique voting machines. And I’d imagine you wouldn’t let the same guys design and program more than one machine or something. There’s no way that’s true.
A simple basic reminder: There are no merit qualifications to be a federal judge or a Supreme Court Justice:
See
https://www.supremecourt.gov/faq.aspx#faqgi2
“The Constitution does not specify qualifications for Justices such as age, education, profession, or native-born citizenship. A Justice does not have to be a lawyer or a law school graduate, but all Justices have been trained in the law. Many of the 18th and 19th century Justices studied law under a mentor because there were few law schools in the country.
The last Justice to be appointed who did not attend any law school was James F. Byrnes (1941-1942). He did not graduate from high school and taught himself law, passing the bar at the age of 23.”
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So no special deference should be given to court findings in matters of public policy. Unfortunately, courts are not objective finders of fact although this is how they often portray themselves.
JD
Carrick,
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I apologize if my tone was offensive above. Neither you nor anyone else here at the blackboard deserves attitude from me. I just overreacted in my incredulity. But I realize perfectly well that there must have been literally dozens of opportunities for Blackboard folk to heap scorn on my ignorant positions, and they (and you) really have never done so.
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My bad, I’m sorry.
Mark, you may be deplorable — but not irredeemable.
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Carrick, I know we do not have Trump’s emails like we do Podesta’s but do you imagine there could be scheming of the likes of coordinating the Machado accusations just after the first debate? I think it was not accidental that the June DNC hack showed the DNC staff (HRC buddies) having fun with a fake Craig’s List employment ad for Trump looking for women who are willing to sign weight clauses and approve of their filming during their workouts. Do you believe the Access Hollywood trailer video was just found a week before its release? If it was not then there was plenty of time to set up the women to come out in confirmation to artificially create the appearance of a Bill Cosby scenario. The only woman we know from the past, Jill Harth, (eluded to in the Craig’s list joke,) has no credibility after admitting she exaggerated the incident due to the separate business civil suit. Harth said she was voting for Trump when interviewed by the NYT before the NH primary.
Does anyone feel that HRC would still be preferable to Trump if she and the DNC had in fact mostly orchestrated and choreographed the Creepy Trump scandal?
Carrick, the odd shaped districts may be due to politics, but it may also be due to the Voting Rights Act, and the requirement to make majority-minority districts. Conservatives oppose them on principle, but Republicans support them in practice. In Illinois, they went to great effort to put Chicago residents into as many different districts as possible.
Ron, I’m pretty sure I saw a story about the Cragislist ad at the time. It wasn’t just a plan, they posted it.
MikeN, Did they take interviews? 🙂
JD Ohio—Regarding gerrymandering, I was careful to point out that both sides do it. So what amounts to a tu quo que argument here doens’t invalidate what I said. If it’s morally corrupt, it’s morally corrupt regardless of which size does it. The fact it’s hard to enforce, doesn’t make it moral when it does happen.
What is black and white is that, on an objective level, North Carolina ends up being the most gerrymandered state in the coutnry. In fact, objectively four of the top five gerrymandered states are Republican controlled. So, while both sides do it, one side is certainly doing it to a much greater extent than the other.
The fact that districts have unusual shapes of course clearly points to motivation.. As Mike N points out, one fact driving redistricting is the Voters Right Act. That wasn’t found to be the motive here by the courts. I should make clear the gerrymandering decision is part of a separate, unanimous, court decision, and the SCOTUS refused to overturn this decision, without dissent.
I’ll tackle the voters id law separately.
Regarding the voter id’s law, I’m not sure why you (JD) are engaging in trying to undermine the legtimacy of the judges rather than address their ruling. If something is valid, it’s valid regardless of who says it.
It appears that even the dissenting judgements accept that the original voter id law not only racially discriminated but did so purposely. What the courts appeared to be divided on is over the remedy, not the determination of intent regarding the original law.
JD Ohio:
That’s not my view, when the law is crafted to disproportionally affect minority turn-out, as appears to have here:
From the majority decision,
I have no problems with voter id laws. According Wikipedia, there are 33 states that have some form of voter id requirement. I presume most of these were written without racial discriminatory intent.
The problem I have is with states that use the pretext of a voter id law to engage in discriminatory practices. And that is what appears to be happening here.
Mark Bofill, it doesn’t appear we are communicating here. Nor does it appear you addressed the content of the article, but are making some different point that I don’t quite follow, in the context of that article.
Again the point of the article I linked, is the heterogenious nature of the environment (multiple types of machines, different versions of software, differences in the ballot that are granular to the congressional presinct scale) makes it more difficult to coordinate fraudulent activity on a national scale in order to rig a presidential election.
The point I was making wasn’t that an individual couldn’t e.g. potentially cast a ballot in two states, but that it would take a massive conspiracy to enact this on a large enough of a scale to rig an election.
Ron Graf:
Billy Bush informed NBC about the tape in August. It appears that NBC lawyers were sitting on the tape. If somebody hadn’t leaked it to the WaPo, it’s possible it never would have been made public.
I’m not sure about your logic though. If they hadn’t heard about the tape, and if Trump hadn’t denied inappropriate sexual contact at the second debate, there’d have been less motivation for them to come out. Remember that even if what you say is true, you know that the billionaire Trump is going to come after you, when you say anything negative about him.
So there’s a huge disincentive to engage with Trump. That is a completely plausible reason why it took special circumstances before anybody was willing to come forward.
Oh you mean, like the Bill Clinton accusers? Of course they did.
Their problems are (i) Hillary Clinton is a much more private person (much less on tape so fewer targets) and (ii) Trump’s own inability to “stay on message” dilutes the potency of any similar attacks.
Billy Bush is a Bush family cousin, and it is possible the tape was leaked by Republicans to bring down Trump.
Carrick, what is your source that Billy Bush was behind revealing the tape? I could not find it. Instead, I found the Access Hollywood producer had been holding the tape and was crafting its release. As you pointed out it might have been caught in legal since the release would be without Trump’s consent. So, clearly the top brass at NBC handed it the Washington Post.
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Carrick, instead of answering my question you made a paragraph out of what the Cosby effect is and then apparently made the case that my hypothetical is impossible. Amazing what our politicians are teaching us.
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In my searching for your assertions Bush’s hand in it I found that NBC is withholding a damaging tape to Hillary from 1999 interview cleansed edits of Juanita Broaddrick describing HRC threatening her.
I think Carrick’s source is the same as yours. NBC and Access Hollywood planned to release it with Billy Bush edited out. They also may have been holding it for a more ideal timing in terms of damaging the Trump campaign. Someone then leaked it, and ruined those plans, forcing Billy Bush into exile for the sin of sucking up to celebrities while working for Access Hollywood.
Ron Graf, there are variants on this story, but here’s one. I think this isn’t “dropping the ball” so much as holding on to the ball too long.
But I have no idea what you’re referring to here (It helps to quote the text rather than paraphrase it. But it’s still better to paraphrase than to leave any context out.):
What in the world are you talking about?
I said nothing about anything being impossible. The point I was making was about why it’s so much easier to find dirt on a reality tv star with hundreds of hours of footage than it is somebody who doesn’t go around having all of their conversations recorded. Of course it gets much easier, when the reality tv star is really is a sleaze ball.
I’m really not sure what your point is about bringing up Juanita Broaddrick and hypothetical footage, which we “know” about based entirely on the 16 year old memory of a supposed NBC “insider”. Some editor sure had trash for standards in accepting that for publication.
Look, we know Trump’s tape exists exactly because it’s been released.
There probably are worse, but until they are released, or their existence is independently confirmed, we don’t know for sure.
There is independent vetting of many of these women’s story.
Trump said he did certain things. There are women (and their associates) who confirm this. ”
I see no reason to doubt this story or to dismiss what amounts to “a conversation with a sociopath” as normal locker room banter. Sorry, but I don’t.
MikeN: Sorry… cross posted.
Carrick, you use ‘NBC “insider”‘ to denigrate the quality of the source, but Lisa Myers is the one who did the interview. This was not a minor detail, so the likelihood of remembering it is high.
Carrick: “I have no problems with voter id laws. According Wikipedia, there are 33 states that have some form of voter id requirement. I presume most of these were written without racial discriminatory intent.
The problem I have is with states that use the pretext of a voter id law to engage in discriminatory practices.”
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I agree with that statement. However, I disagree with the Left’s total dismissal of the idea that there is or can be significant voter fraud. For instance, according to your link Pennsylvania has no voter security and New Mexico has virtually no security. New Mexico’s law is: “in 2008, the existing voter ID law was relaxed, and now allows a voter to satisfy the ID requirement by stating his/her name, address as registered, and year of birth.”
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For instance, a Democratic elections official, Schulkin, in NYC stated: “He gave out ID cards, de Blasio. That’s in lieu of a driver’s license, but you can use it for anything,†Mr. Schulkinsaid Dec. 15. “But they didn’t vet people to see who they really are. Anybody can go in there and say, ‘I am Joe Smith, I want an ID card. It’s absurd. There is a lot of fraud. Not just voter fraud, all kinds of fraud … This is why I get more conservative as I get older.†See http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/11/alan-schulkin-nyc-democrat-election-commissioner-a/
Later under pressure from Democrats in NYC he retracted his statement. In my view, the proper response to his statement is to investigate it rather than simply say it is ridiculous. If you aren’t checking or looking for something, you will never find it. At about 1:00 in the video in my link Schulkin says you can’t even ask for an ID in NY.
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Politicians are definitely not the most honest people in the world and if you give them the opportunity to cheat they will. The Left has zero concern with election security and is always nit-picking any attempts to insure honest elections. 80% of North Carolina’s restrictions were ill-advised, that does not justify no security at all for Pennsylvania’s voting.
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My concern is over election integrity and preventing fraudulent voting. You can have honest vote counts in gerrymandered districts, so that is not my concern in this series of posts. People have attempted to stop gerrymandering for a long time and haven’t. It is irrelevant to the issue of voter ids and potential voter fraud.
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Judges and legal public officials have politicized legal decisions, so I view judicial decisions as the equivalent of one climate paper making a climate related finding. Currently, we have Ruth Ginsburg, a joke, on the Supreme Court (she isn’t even trusted to make an apology in person) and there are no enforceable standards of competence for any federal judges. Their findings are simply one bite of the apple by the judges involved to discern what has happened in any one case. So, when someone says that because a court made a ruling that the facts are as stated by the court, I say the court just has one opinion on the truth of the facts. (As opposed to the practical effect of the court’s judgment being enforceable.) Other people, many times more competent than the court, are entitled to analyze the facts and give their opinion.
JD
Voter fraud is very much a side issue and one that need not be used when in a democracy like ours the politicians can very legally buy votes by promising one group something at the expense of another with a promised group in larger voting numbers than those doing the paying – or better yet by letting the coming generations pay for it. Did Hillary or Donald talk about that? I didn’t think so. Did either talk about foisting the debt off on future generations? I didn’t think so.
There are no constitutional restraints on these actions either or how far they can be taken and in fact the current intellectual crowd encourages it. And better yet the voters are discussing less important issues and ignoring the ones that can in the future bring the nation to its knees. The presidential debates are more like bread and circuses than an intellectual discussion of where we are headed and it appears the voting public has not wised-up yet maybe never will.
My only voting process experience was as a poll watcher in the Chicago intercity in the the 1960s when the political machine was more powerful. The first several voters into the polling booths were accompanied by the precinct captain who pulled the lever for the voter. When we informed him that that was illegal unless the voter was incapacitated and asked for help he told us he always did it that way. All six polling judges referred to the precinct captain as Mr. and were most grateful when bought them all lunch. Outside there were precinct workers doling out butter and food to get voters into the polling place. There was a city policeman in the polling place who said he did not appreciate our presence there told us he was in charge. He knew next to nothing about election laws or rules. Later six young man entered the polling place without identifying themselves and asked us what we doing there. They were there to obviously intimidate us. I later had a chance to have a conversation with the precinct captain who was actually a nice man just doing his assigned job. He told me his job depended on getting a certain number of voters to vote and how they voted was less important since the voters were very dependably Democrat.
Now I have no doubts that that situation could have been worse in Southern state polling places during that time, but it was a lesson in democracy that I never saw in Civics 101.
Chicago 1968-70 precinct bounded on east by Lincoln avenue and Armitage on south. I can’t remember north and south boundaries. The people operating the polling station knew everyone in the neighborhood, including me and I’d just moved in. There is no way anything funny could have happened there without their participation. I suspect it was like this in most city precincts.
At the time, I thought the Republican poll watcher was as Republican as Richard J. Daley.
Carrick: “I said nothing about anything being impossible.”
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This is true. But your not answering my question and instead walking around it and regurgitating the circumstances insinuating Trump’s guilt could only lead to the logical conclusion you were making the case that no other credible explanation existed. I project on you that you were making the logical argument of why question could not be considered pertinent. I apologize for mind reading.
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I heard a liberal pundit on Fox tonight invoke the Cosby effect and pointing to the similarity. Hillary and her supporters could be correct that Trump is a habitual abuser of women. I guess my point is that if they thought this was true wouldn’t it have been better to get the ball rolling at the GOP convention? Then there would have been time to investigate and verify the stories. But the evidence shows the DNC intentionally waited until there would be only fresh accusations but no investigations.
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I’ve said before that Trump certainly does not make it a secret that he is a ladies man. He has a beautiful third wife that’s half his age. This does not make him an abuser. It makes him your average celebrity (however immoral that is). I don’t like celebrities that much. He is caught on tape confessing to misdemeanors in front of a production crew and host. Or, is he doing a bad impersonation of Howard Stern or Bill Clinton having fun making insanely politically incorrect statements in the moments before they think they are going on mic? I don’t know. But that is he and Melania are saying it was. I Remember the left assailing Ronald Reagan when he was caught having the same kind of bad jokes. The took the statements of starting nuclear war at face value. Reagan was said to be unstable, dangerous, crazy. He ended up making the world a lot safer. The left got him wrong.
Carrick, my point that I might as well just spell out is that if Trump is mostly telling the truth, that these women are lying, the implication is that they were put up to it by a dirty tricks squad.
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Tonight on Fox News there are three new revelations of HRC corruption.
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1) Project Veritas has the no fired DNC operative, and frequent WH guest, Robert Creamer telling of a crazy scheme that they were forced to do only because HRC demanded it herself; to dress up in Donald Duck costumes to parity Trump ducking the issues. Although this is minor, the reason Creamer is bringing it up is to impress his listener that HRC is directly linked to their (highly illegal) efforts.
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2) WSJ broke a story that Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, career Clinton family ally and former HRC campaign manager, gave 500K to the wife of the deputy director of the FBI, who was charged with overseeing the Clinton email investigation. The money amounted to 1/3 of the campaign pot for the wife’s unsuccessful run for office in Virginia.
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3)Novelist Jeff Rovin has come forward as HRC’s “fixer,” working on countless jobs paying off journalists and sources hush money regarding scandals. Of particular interest to me is that Rovin says that it was an open secret that Vince Foster and HRC had an affair and the Clinton marriage was an open marriage. To remind all, part of the crime scene file forensic report is that Foster’s body had semen in the underwear and that death does not cause this.
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Carrick, regarding Juanita Broaddrick, she said when Bill Clinton left the motel room with her lying with a blood dripping from the corner of her lip after being orally raped she thought any moment to door would open and there would be someone coming to get rid of her. She remembers telling the story in the NBC interview of HRC grabbing her hand and not letting go until her subtle threat was acknowledged. She was very aware of that part not being broadcast. I’m sure if true it’s something one would never forget.
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I honestly think that Linda Tripp kept Monica’s dress and taped her phone conversation, forcing her to testify, to make sure Monica did not get silenced for good. Remember, Tripp was the one who Vince Foster told could have is candy since he had to go but would be right back after he could check out a pager, find an untraceable gun and blow his brains out.
Trump supporters concerned about voter fraud might also be concerned about the suggestion Trump was involved in insurance fraud.
“PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Donald Trump said he received a $17 million insurance payment in 2005 for hurricane damage to Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Palm Beach, but The Associated Press found little evidence of such large-scale damage.”
For the story go to
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/1fefeef4a4e84fa4af6441f4b6d221f0/trump-took-17-million-insurance-damage-few-remember
I guess modern science didn’t have enough nails in its coffin.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/10/25/the-worlds-most-respected-science-journal-nature-starts-on-the-road-to-perdition/
Andrew
Thank you, Andrew, for bringing this to our attention. I am not at all surprised that Nature’s editorial board favors Clinton, but I am stunned to see them make a formal endorsement.
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Maybe it is just my weird way of looking at things, but I see this as a near perfect counterpoint to Scott Adams’s endorsement of Trump: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/152293480726/the-bully-party
Money quote: “I endorse Donald Trump for President of the United States because I oppose bullying in all its forms. “
Ron Graf, there was some materials donations as well, making Terry’s contribution close to 700k. This was for a losing candidate for the STATE Senate? How many people raise 2 million dollars for a state Senate campaign? That is more than some US Senate campaigns, and most House campaigns. I wonder who else donated.
It looks like Fox News is able to verify the Donna Brazile email in Wiki Leaks through the use of an email verification program called a DKIM security key.
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Yahoo takes a possibly legitimate poke at Jeff Rovin, the Clinton fixer who claimed in an article in the National Enquirer to pay off journalists and witnesses to silence Clinton embarrassments.
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We will wait to see if Fox News can independently authenticate Rovin’s claims. Surely the search for Trump accusers ties up the legacy media’s resources. Whether or not Rovin is hoaxing he certainly is no stranger to it. But who better to trust with secrets than someone with no credibility? He might as well be an insane person, a perfect messenger.
Ron Graf (Comment #153327)
October 25th, 2016 at 1:20 pm
It looks like Fox News is able to verify the Donna Brazile email in Wiki Leaks through the use of an email verification program called a DKIM security key.
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Probably, but not positively. Still, it seems unlikely a hacker would go to the trouble of fabricating an e-mail as innocuous as that one. It wouldn’t surprise me if the DNC got a questions in advance so Hillary could prepare an answer, nor would it surprise me if Trumps got questions in advance so he could prepare answers.
JD — sorry that I didn’t have a chance to get back to this till now. Busy day.
I don’t want to turn this into a debate over which party is more corrupt. (From the point of advocating for good law, I think we should assume they are both equally corrupt and corruptible).
We are basically in agreement on the need for voter id to reduce the possibility of voter fraud. I just think it needs to be done in a way that safeguards people’s right to vote.
Put another way, if you disenfranchise voters through these laws, you need objective data demonstrating that the number of voters who are actually protected is larger than the number you disenfranchise.
My belief is that gerrymandering robs far more people of the legitimacy of their votes than out-right voter fraud. I should point out that gerrymandering, which produces districts that are very elongated, can lead to outright voter suppression (for example, make the district very elongated, close local polling stations, so people have to drive long distances to get to their poling station).
I would really like to see national standards that all states accept for district creation, and for placement of polling stations, so that all voters have an equal chance of voting.
I agree with Kenneth Fritsch–it is actually much easier to simply buy people’s votes using the money of their children or grandchildren.
j ferguson (Comment #153297)
You lived and voted in Lincoln Park and that is about as far as one could get from where I was a poll watcher with regards to income and wealth. I call what I saw something akin to plantation politics and still to this day the driving force for Democrats in the big cities.
Ron Graf—You still haven’t told me what question I’m supposedly dodging. I don’t see any reason why we have to automatically assume that Trump is being honest and all of his detractors are corrupt (even when they are just repeating his own words).
Nor do I accept that his conversation with Billy Bush is normal in any respect. Trump is describing what are to me rather chilling sociopathic tendencies (i.e., he’s a star so he can do what he wants, and nobody complains) in that conversation. This is not regular guy chatter. My instinct is this is the real Donald Trump.
That said, I think we need to just agree to disagree here.
Carrick: (From the point of advocating for good law, I think we should assume they are both equally corrupt and corruptible).
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I don’t follow, please explain. I think what matters in this election is which individual candidates will uphold the constitution and the rule of law, and evidence of corruption is important. Saying it’s okay because everybody does it is not okay.
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The English spent over a 1000 years wrestling control from kings and warlords and developed a good system which was further tuned to make the constitution. A lot of thought and discussion went into that. It’s sad to see it slip back towards the natural state of man: kings and warlords (and wars).
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We live in exceptional times, good times relatively speaking, but it would be a mistake to expect them to continue without working hard at it.
Here was my question to you, Carrick:
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Carrick, you say we have an admission of wrong doing in his own words. I don’t think every naughty or self-deprecating thing that one says is an admission of guilt, especially if not remotely in context. They were in a joking sarcastic, yet admittedly raunchy, conversation. Have you ever seem a live comedy act lately? They could make Lenny Bruce blush.
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On the other hand, I do not completely discount that he could not be as pure as snow and perhaps has taken advantage of his celebrity status. I do think that is normal, unfortunately. If you think otherwise I could list some examples. The question in this election is not who is purest, it’s who is going to bring our federal agencies back from the brink of complete corruption and who might push them off the edge. On foreign policy an unpredictable strongman is much less likely to be underestimated in a game of Chicken.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #153343)
It’s true that a Lincoln Park precinct was likely very different from where you were observing. At the same time, in 1968, in our neighborhood gentrification was just getting underway and a lot of the previous crowd was still there. And the political apparatus was about 50/50 new folks and the original locals.
We even still had a long established Irish street gang, the Hudson Corps.
Jit,
There is an H.P. Lovecraft, creator of Cthulhu, titled The Dunwich Horror, probably no connection. not to mention Lovecraft’s Dunwich is in New England.
Re: Ledite (Comment #153345)
I think all he means is that “good” laws (and lawful practices) ought to assume that everyone is equally corrupt/corruptible. Both from the standpoint of fairness and to ensure safeguards/checks-and-balances.
Ron, I think the Democrats’ intentions were to have the accusers come forward a few at a time. Then after Trump issues his denials, threatens lawsuits, etc, drop the Billy Bush tape.
MikeN, having the women come out first would have made more sense. Perhaps the women had cold feet, none of them wanting to be the first.
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On the corruption front, there is yet another strong piece of evidence that came out yesterday that the DoS is overrun with lingering HRC corruption.
Because of Bentel’s conflicting stories the judge granted Judicial Watch’s motion to depose Bentel, who last week invoked his 5th amendment rights not to self-incriminate 90 times, not answering a single question. He will join Lois Lerner with lots of bonuses and accelerated retirement benefits.
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On the getting caught lying front, President Obama joins the gang this week as revealed by Cheryl Mills’s email from Wiki Leaks as she goes into panic mode when hearing Obama publicly claim he did not know about the private server. “We need to clean this up — they do not say state.gov,” Mills wrote to Podesta. They almost got away with it too. The fact that Obama was emailing her on the server only came out a few weeks ago as the FBI released the emails to congress. The FBI was not going to mention it.
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The left’s current talking point that Obama is too busy to notice email addresses and did not know it was a private server, if true, would only underscore the recklessness of Clinton, having the president not know he was communicating insecurely.
DeWitt: I’ve read all of Lovecraft’s works, including the ones that were almost unreadable. So I’ve read that one, but can’t remember which story it is. (From memory there seem to be several with fishy goings-on in crumbling seaside towns – The Shadow Over Innsmouth springs to mind as another I might confuse the Dunwich Horror with). The story of his that I admire the most is probably The Colour Out of Space. By the way, from Dunwich, if you go up the coast a short way you get to Blythburgh, whose church allegedly has the Devil’s claw marks in the door. (An outer door has burn marks; up in the tower another door has burn marks, maybe opening onto the bell-ringers room – haven’t been for decades, so can’t remember. Do seem to recall that the burns were on the ‘wrong’ side of the doors – the Devil was supposed to be trapped in the tower, I think, and struck by lightning.)
Regarding the discussion about gerrymandering: this also seems scarcely credible in the 21st century. In the UK we have an electoral commission that is politically neutral and which sets constituency boundaries. The most recent case I can think of where gerrymandering was even hinted at related to building council flats on one side of a constituency boundary or another, I think. Anyway, point is: you give responsibility to a politically-neutral organisation. (If I sound like I’m saying how great the UK is at politics compared to the US, I ain’t, I’m just trying to understand how such things can happen.)
Ron Graf:
I pointed out Bill Clinton’s accusers as an example. Wouldn’t you love to see what emails they’ve been receiving and coordinating with Assange & Wikileaks. You are guilty of assuming your guys are saints.
No, I’m saying there’s no reason to take his word over 11 or so women, when what he said is consistent with them, and in several cases the women reported that behavior to their acquaintences prior to the leaking of the Bush tape. Nor is what he said consistent with a person who has a normal image of his relations with the opposite sex.
oliver:
Yes, that’s exactly what I meant.
MikeN:
I imagine they must have been rumors about this, but Trump is a very dangerous man. You pretty much would have to know that if you made a salacious claim against him, he will do everything in his power to destroy you. If he’s guilty as charged, there are lots more women hanging around in the wings (including those that didn’t mind his advances).
Ron, the plans were ruined when the tape was leaked.
jit:
It comes from the way the US Constitution is set up, and reflects the representative nature of American democracy. The idea is to limit the amount of central control. If you didn’t, then you could end up with a form of gerrymandering that was set up by the central government.
Some states do have anti-gerrymandering laws,but it is constitutional and legal in many states to gerrymander, even when the result of that is to bias the vote so that one side gets a disproportional number of votes.
Summarized here part of the Republicans strategy when the demographics started shifting away from them was to spend an unprecedented amount of money to take control of individual state’s legislature, because this meant they could (legally) change the legislative boundaries to be more favorable to them. This has resulted in the Republicans receiving 60 of 99 seats in Ohio, for example, in spite of receiving a minority of the vote.
Jit,
There is talk of a movie of At the Mountains of Madness. Guillermo del Toro is pushing it. There’s an article about a proposed video game on the web that includes some animation including Cthulhu rising from the sea. I’m not holding my breath waiting for either the movie or the game. But who knows.
MikeN:
Based on the frequency of the leaks of Democratic emails, we’ll see soon enough. 😀
By the way Machado didn’t come out of nowhere.
There was an article on her back in May.
Carrick, your link to Ohio, shows Republicans winning not a minority but 57% of votes, and not 60 seats but 66.
The Craigslist ad appeared before the Machado story was published, though they may have gotten a tipoff as it was being written.
Carrick, The Clinton accusers (victims) had their stories vetted long ago. There was no evidence ever found that they were politically motivated or coordinated in any way by conservatives. Judy Woodruff grilled Paula Jones to the point of breaking her down to tears, accusing her of collusion with conservatives and wasting important people’s time. No war on women I guess when one dares to embarrass the left.
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As MikeN is pointing out, and as we can see from Podesta and DNC emails, there is little chance that the Trump accusers and the Billy Bush tape were unconnected independent events. The object on October surprise is two-fold: 1) to keep the scandal fresh in mind of the voter, 2) to not provide time for investigation. The second only works against the Republicans since the investigating media is over 95% liberal, as evidenced by the political donations.
Ron, no one answered the question I posed earlier. Have there been any stories about Trump and pregnant women or breastfeeding? This was in the Craigslist ad, and if such a story has not been released then we can expect it on Nov 5th or so.
MikeN,
I doubt that if I can find the quote if it was a quote, but Trump was reported to react pretty crudely to a woman who was lactating. I think it was that her schedule required that she both work and care for her newborn and this involved extracting milk for later use with the baby – (tough process to describe elegantly)
Trump referred to it as disgusting.
If you find this story improbable, I’ll try to find a source.
Pumping breast milk for later bottle feeding is very common. It’s only disgusting if you think it was somebody’s left over milk from morning breakfast and mistakenly swig it down. It didn’t happen to me. I got labeled containers for my wife.
MikeN–the minority of the vote comment referred to the 2012 presidential election, rather than the house numbers. Those are more difficult to accurately assess because of districts where candidates run unchallenged (in those cases, the number shows up as 0%).
I would add a cautionary note—we are in a republic rather than a representational democracy, and that applies to how many state governments are set up too (but it’s not anything I’ve studied).
So I would expect rural counties to be over-represented relative to the plurality of vote, and rural states generally leans Republican.
Thus simply noticing that the percentage of votes case doesn’t match the percentage of representation within a state isn’t evidence itself of gerrymandering. I would use the shape of the districts (adjusted for geography like with Louisiana and Hawaii) as a better measure. Most states turn out to be surprising neutral on average, including states that are strongly Republican (my theory is these states have less to gain from cheating, not that they are inherently honest).
Here’s the link to that geographical study again.
Can you link the Craig’s List story you’re talking about? I tried vetting that and what I could find seems to be debunked.
Ron Graf: Leaving aside the questionable accuracy of the many statements that Trump has made about it, I would normally consider the spouse of the candidate to be “off limits” and going after their spouse to be the dirtiest of the dirty tricks.
So when you asked me a question about if I could conceive of anything like Machado, bringing up Bill Clinton’s misconduct is precisely that example for me.
Bringing up Machado is completely appropriate here–it involves Trump and his treatment and attitudes towards women. As to the timing—well that’s how things work in the real universe. Nobody would expect Vladimir Putin to time a maneuver so that it’s convenient for the President, nor to forewarn him/her. The fact Trump handled this so badly is just more proof that he’s temperamentally unsuited for the executive office.
I should point out the obvious: Bill Clinton isn’t running for office. So it’s not even relevant to most of us (won’t affect who we vote for).
But Trump still managed to legitimize both attacking the candidate’s spouse and discussion of his sexual misconduct. That doesn’t square with somebody who has the strategic skill we need in the executive office either.
I just saw this link & thought I’d share it. Having neutral redistricting commissions doesn’t necessary stop misconduct either. [This particular example is from California.]
Carrick: “Leaving aside the questionable accuracy of the many statements that Trump has made about it, I would normally consider the spouse of the candidate to be “off limits†and going after their spouse to be the dirtiest of the dirty tricks.”
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The only Machado point is the Craig’s List ad pre-dates Hillary bringing the issue to the forefront by over six months. There’s plenty of well documented evidence of examples of elaborate scheming by HRC. As for your sense on “dirty tricks” I think you might be as naive as Trump. Attacking a spouse, or anyone who has not voluntarily entered the public fray, is just political stupidity. This is why HRC uses surrogates like Machado and the Kahns; counter-attacks are worse than ineffective. Trump is a political babe in the woods, obviously. Does this mean he has bad judgement on financial dynamics or deal making? No it does not. And, your implication that HRC has a good temperament is defined by a few short public appearances. The reports of her demeanor at work are that of someone with an uncontrollable temper and penchant for humiliating subordinates.
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Is Bill Clinton only a candidate’s spouse? No, he is the main reason for her political career being possible. Also, many voters wrongly assume that they would govern similarly. So attacking Slick Willy, who is giving political speeches for her, is not out of bounds. But the point about Clinton’s crimes is not so much about him as the media’s hypocrisy after attacking those women, the Star investigation, the impeachment and continued behavior. But perhaps nobody attacked or schemed more to destroy reputations and/or intimate silence more HRC — this according the women themselves.
J Ferguson, no need, if the story has already been published, then that is not the remaining items we will hear about Trump.
Carrick, you linked to the story. The debunking is actually confirming most of the details. They attribute the groping portion to another story.
One detail not in that article is that the Craigslist ad was published. I remember reading about it at the time.
As for gerrymandering, Baker vs Carr requires that all state legislative districts be equal in population. Setting up like the US House and Senate is not allowed.
The stronger a gerrymander, the weaker it is. Arguably, gerrymandering is what allowed Democrats to takeover Congress in 2006, though it was by a considerable margin. Ideal gerrymander is to take a 50-50 state, and give the other party one district with 90% while moving the other districts to 52-48. So you now win 50% of the vote and take all but one district.
However, in a wave election, all your districts will fall, while if you had focused on compactness and stability there would be more variation and you would hold more seats.
Carrick,
Machado was in violation of a binding contract when she gained a lot of weight in the 3 or 4 months following the pageant. Somehow ‘violated her contract’ is never included in the stories that reach the MSM. Trump could have simply replaced her with the second place finisher. I think the dog and pony show with Machado at the gym was ill considered. If he was verbally abusive in private (we have no evidence of that except Machado’s word… against Trump’s), that was even more ill considered. He should simply have replaced her under the terms of the contract… and not been personally involved in the process. The guy is undisciplined, but Machado’s behavior was the actually the cause of the problem.
Machado’s word is not that great since along with claiming Trump called her Miss Piggy she also said the weight-loss program caused her to have an eating disorder. However, interview she gave in 1997 have her talking about having the eating disorder before being Miss Universe.
Ron Graf:
The Craig’s List story appears to be apocryphal, but we’ve learned from Wikileaks that Clinton’s campaign knew about it back in December 2015.
Regarding the temperament question—I notice you’re perfectly happy try and pivot this into an unrelated story about Clinton, regardless of how badly vetted it is.
But that unproven story doesn’t take away from the fact that we’ve watched Trump get led around by the nose for three debates. Not exactly presidential material.
SteveF:
True enough, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the question of how Trump treats women.
I agree the allegations of name calling in this case are unproven, but in Trump’s case, we have a long track record of similar insulting behavior towards women and people in general.
Plus the real story of Machado isn’t whether she’s telling the truth, but how Trump reacted to the provocation. He has neither any tactical sense as Clinton demonstrated on numerous occasions during the debates, and completely lacks any strategic vision.
Again…people who can be so easily manipulated have no business being in high office.
I, for one, find nothing mean about the wish that any candidate be struck by a bolt of lightening [sic!]. Unlike a bolt of lightning, it would certainly elevate the mood this dismal year.
Carrick, I don’t think the Craigslist ad is apocryphal. I don’t know how to search for it separate from the Wikileaks, but I remember a story about it at the time.
Trump’s behavior shows he’s unfit? What we are seeing is that when hit he hits back, at roughly equal levels. I don’t see that as disqualifying for a President, who is not likely to be receiving personal attacks from foreign leaders, and if he did his responses would be similar in kind. It is likely that his presidency would involve lots of distractions where he is attacking the media, other politicians, and comedians, but that wouldn’t be disqualifying but more entertaining.
Carrick:
I feel there is just as much evidence of HRC being disrespectful to subordinates as there is for Trump being disrespectful in public. I think the demarcation between Trump supporters and those who can’t hold their nose is the degree of importance one places on the integrity of our governmental institutions as well as whether you feel socialism is the right direction for success. As far as vision, the Wiki Leaks reveal that HRC has no vision beyond what she edits off of a speech written for her. Her aids were frustrated in not knowing what her positions are at many times. When it comes to presidential power the primary constitutionally assigned responsibility is to conduct foreign policy. They will both receive essentially the same advice. The differences between them are who is likely going to project the image of strength vs. who is will be forced to use it, or choose to lose, as Obama often does.
Talk is talk. Harry Truman was not a particularly good speaker, for example. I would say Truman was a much better president than the eloquent Obama. Once in office debating is no longer a skill needed for the job.
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He improved in each debate. Not bad for a 70-year-old.
Hi all,
I didn’t want to jump back into pointless argument on this thread, but I noticed something I thought was interesting on Google Trends and wanted to get ya’lls opinion:
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here. Vote Trump vrs Vote Clinton.
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Vote Trump seems to have surged [starting] on Oct 25’th. The only thing that I’ve been able to imagine that might account for it is news of Obamacare rate increases next year announced the day before?
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What do you peoples think. Is there something more likely in your view to account for it?
[Edit: or is it an imponderable and am I trying to read meaning in tea leaves.]
Being led around by the nose? You mean by the smell of money? From Soros especially.
This political cartoon sums up this election for many voters. It’s from National Review.
“The Choice, by Michael Ramirez (October 26, 2016)”
http://c4.nrostatic.com/sites/default/files/pic_cartoon_102616.jpg
Huh. I abbreviated you all incorrectly, would you look at that. I meant to type “y’all”.
There. Much more better.
Hi Mark,
I don’t know what the Google trend means, but there’s no bump for Trump in the RCP average since Oct. 25. Instead, Clinton’s lead widens a little:
Oct. 25 5.1
Oct. 26 5.4
Oct. 27 5.8
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html
Thanks Max.
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As I understand it, the RCP average is some sort of average of polls. So I wouldn’t expect it to react to a change of two days ago unless it was dependent on a whole lot of really recent polls. Do you disagree?
[Edit: No, I see. Some of those polls overlap.]
Thanks!
I let myself get sidetracked there with the point Max raised. I’d like to clarify that nobody is saying Google Trends predicts polls or results, particularly [not] me.
2008 Election Vote Romney Vote Obama. Shows Romney ahead of Obama the whole way. Trump is more googled ~everywhere~ than HRC, nobody thinks this means California or New York are going to vote Trump.
No, in fact it was my excitement that I thought I could make any meaningful sense of a Google Trend change at all that led me to inquire here. Did event X (news of obamacare rate increases) drive change to google trend Y. Not is trend Y going to affect poll Z or flip the election. This is all I was interested in figuring out.
Thanks.
Uhm 2012 not 2008. Coffee. 🙁
MikeN: Regarding CraigsList, I saw the story too. Nobody’s been able to confirm it. It appears to be yet another hoax.
Ron Graf: I think the WikiLeaks are a better source of Clinton’s temperament than unverifiable paid statements from Republican stooges. There are issues that come up about Clinton’s judgement and behavior in the WikiLeaks email dumps, but I haven’t seen a pattern of Clinton being abusive to her subordinates in those documents. (More evidence of the sorts of concerns I have about her.) I figure the real story is male authority figures getting all bent because that woman didn’t kowtow appropriately when spoken to by a male voice of authority. “What a nasty woman.”
All of this is an ironic thing for you raise in any case, because we have plenty of irrefutable evidence of Donald Trump treating people poorly. Starting from the 280 or so people that he’s personally insulted. Besides his own word that he abuses his power & fame and sexually assaults women, we have a long legal record of Donald Trump breaking contracts, ruining people’s lives, and being a professional huckster and fraudster.
As to “talk is talk”. Talk is the currency of politics and diplomacy. If somebody doesn’t know how to control their mouth, that makes them a perfectly awful politician.
Further, bragging about sexual assault is not just talk. Even if it never happened, thinking this type of behavior is funny, is not normal.
Regarding the debates, Trump actually did none of the preparation needed to perform well. I see somebody who lacks strategic vision, lacks any tactical insight, and is incapable of even the most basic preparation. In terms of being out-maneuvered, the third debate was actually the worse.
mark bofill: One of the things that trended after the third debate was “Donald Trump iraq”. Trending isn’t always a good thing. The average of polls seems to be a better quantitative measure of how people are performing.
Thanks Carrick.
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Certainly. In my last comment, I tried to emphasize the points you raise. I am not suggesting that trending is always a good thing. I’m not suggesting that the average of polls aren’t a better quantitative measure of how people are [going to vote].
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I’ll repeat:
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Thanks.
It’s OK. It was a dumb question.
Here’s the answer. I should have thought to do this comparison earlier, instead of asking people.
Strangely, my graph doesn’t imply what it appears to about the U.S.A. Most of the geographic focus for obamacare googling is in the U.S. Most of the geographic focus for trump googling during that interval is OUTSIDE OF the U.S. I.E., it’s not the people googling obamacare who are googling trump.
Further posts by me on this subject have been cancelled due to lack of interest. 🙂 I’ll shush now.
mark bofill: ” I’m not suggesting that the average of polls aren’t a better quantitative measure of how people are [going to vote].”
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Actually, there is really no reason to believe that an average is better than an individual poll. The differences between polls are mostly due to systematic errors. You can not average out systematic errors since averaging something that is wrong with something that is right produces something that is wrong. This is very different from what happens with random errors; those can be averaged out.
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Unless some specific error has been identified, a poll with an extreme result is just as likely to be right (or wrong) as a poll near the average. All that you accomplish by averaging is to reduce the margin by which you might be wrong.
MikeM:
Actually, there is reason to expect that certain types of systematic error get averaged out with a average-of-polls, though I agree, not all. (Hence the 3% error in the projected Obama-Romney outcome versus the actual one.)
For example:
• Likely voter models.
• Sampling bias.
• Bais associated with how the questions are answered.
This works for sensors too. Different sensors (meaning different designs) have different calibration errors. Typically the calibration errors are uncorrelated. Averaging over sensors has the same effect of reducing the systematic bias of an individual sensor.
Similar concept.
Breaking…
FBI re-opens Clinton email investigation.
Carrick, I already addressed most of your points in your last comment. But in claiming something like sexual assault cannot be done in fun it reminded me after 9/11 that reporters were noting that terrorism would now be off limits to comedians, being too serious an issue to be joked about. Only in America such a statement acts to only be throwing down the glove of challenge to the most resourceful. Jeff Dunham’s Achmed the Dead Terrorists is one of the most hilarious skits ever. Myth busted. Of course, it’s tragic if the delivery fails.
Marc, Oct 25th was the same day Scott Adams posted this:
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/152293480726/the-bully-party
At the end he wrote:
He has not explained what changed. My assumption was if Trump loses no one would care, but if he wins, Scott Adams looks like a genius.
Carrick, also, there are millions of people that dream about being sexually assaulted by celebrities. Screaming girls with beatlemania come to mind.
Voter Fraud incidents: See http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/election/article111029767.html
and http://6abc.com/politics/action-news-investigation-voting-from-the-grave/1575596/
JD
Clinton talking about “determining” (fixing) Palestinian election. Amazing. See http://observer.com/2016/10/2006-audio-emerges-of-hillary-clinton-proposing-rigging-palestine-election/
JD
Ron,
I think it’s the other way around. The screaming girls are dreaming of sexually assaulting the celebrities. See for example the women who throw panties at the stage.
The logic of Ramirez’ cartoon
http://c4.nrostatic.com/sites/default/files/pic_cartoon_102616.jpg
suggests the Russians made a far better choice. That’s the really scary part of this campaign.
http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/28/james-comey-fbi-director-reopens-clinton-email-inv/
New emails found during Weiner Sexting probe. FBI evidently re-opening investigation.
And in other news:
Before the Flood is opening this weekend. Leonardo DiCaprio tells us why we’re all going to die from global warming. At the moment, it has a lower Tomatometer reading, 68%, than An Inconvenient Truth, 93%.
So, some questions:
1. If things go south, can the DNC replace Hillary at this late date?
2. If so, will the DNC replace Hillary at this late date?
3. If so, who’s it likely to be?
4. Will s/he have decent odds?
None of these are rhetorical.
Ron:
Got it. So it’s okay in your world for Trump to molest women because you really think women want to be molested by creepy old men.
DeWitt:
I would guess consensual sex is what is on their mind.
lucia:
It never was closed, actually. Weiner and Adebin shared a computer. I’d guess there were work related emails on that computer. I predict we won’t hear much further until after the election is over.
I read this as the Obama administration cutting Hillary’s campaign loose.
mark bofill: Here is my take:
I don’t believe things will go south, except maybe for Abedin.
It’s hard to imagine that if there are several thousand additional work related emails that Abedin hasn’t turned over, that she hasn’t committed a felony by lying to the FBI.
I wouldn’t expect any announcement on that until after the elections are over.
Edit: If I’m right about the unreported emails, it’s possible we’ll see Abedin resign in the next few days.
Thanks Carrick. There IS an awful lot unknown still. Possibly Hillary will be unscathed, relatively speaking.
Were e-mails about the Clinton Foundation handed over as work related?
Huma likely had many e-mails that were not handed over. It wouldn’t matter though. She very preceptively noticed early on the case was doomed. She was shown e-mail from the President, and responded ‘How is this not classified.’ She even asked for a copy.
So the evidence the government has means that if Hillary committed a crime, so did Obama.
mark bofill,
The only thing that’s happening is that the FBI is having people look at the emails which may affect the FBI’s conclusions. They aren’t saying they’ve found a smoking gun. They just found something that means investigators need to continue investigating.
(There is some word smithing going on. Evidently:
1)Comey had ‘stopped’ the investigation in the sense that investigator weren’t looking any more emails, but
2) The formal investigation wasn’t actually “complete”, even though Comey told Congress his opinion of the proper conclusion so now
3) Due to the new emails that have popu up, the investigators have new stuff to look at.
So: investigators who previously weren’t actually investigating anymore are no back to investigating. BUT, officially, the case has not “reopened” because it was never “closed”.
Carrick,
It’s actually pretty confusing because information we have access to isn’t exactly “complete”. And, evidently, things were found on Anthony’s devise.
But some reports seem to suggest Abedin was in the habit of forwarding state emails (possibly even including highly classified stuff) to her yahoo email. It’s not clear that the number is “thousands”– I read that number too, but elsewhere, someone suggested that number has no basis.
I think all we (I?) know is that there are some, they were found as a result of the investigation about Weiner sexting a 15 yo and Comey thinks some at the FBI need to look into them to assess what that all means legally.
How solid is the Weiner connection. It is known that Newt Gingrich referred someone in March to Judicial Watch which then raised money to pursue an alternate avenue of acquiring Hillary’s e-mails.
Lucia,
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Yes, duly noted. I am jumping the gun somewhat.
Mark Bofill: Well we do know the emails came from a computer that Weiner and Abedin shared. That defines the scope of what we’re looking at.
Perhaps I’m misreading this, but I don’t see how this isn’t a problem for Abedin (perjury), regardless of whether there is sensitive information in the emails or not.
Carrick,
“…that she hasn’t committed a felony by lying to the FBI.
I wouldn’t expect any announcement on that until after the elections are over.
Edit: If I’m right about the unreported emails, it’s possible we’ll see Abedin resign in the next few days.”
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Ummm…. Of course, bad stuff will only be disclosed after the election is over, if ever. Most likely: never. Lots of people have been personally destroyed by the Clinton machine. Huma Abedin, if she is destroyed, will be but the most recent victim. That she married a crazy loser leftist weirdo is somehow apropos. One might see a correlation between “loser”, “crazy”, “leftist”, and “weirdo”, but many will claim that is nothing but coincidence.
I’m getting swept away by commentators who may be full of it:
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link here.
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It might be nothing at all. In which case I think Comey deserves even more of my respect than before, considering he just commit career suicide assuming he’s got nothing and Hillary Clinton becomes President. Talk about balls.
Lucia, “It’s actually pretty confusing because information we have access to isn’t exactly “completeâ€. And, evidently, things were found on Anthony’s devise.
But some reports seem to suggest Abedin was in the habit of forwarding state emails (possibly even including highly classified stuff) to her yahoo email.”
….
In addition to the potential of finding explosive stuff in the emails, there is also a very serious issue of perjury pertaining to the existence of emails and what was sent through private accounts. For instance, Clinton has said she deleted tens of thousands of her private emails — it may turn out that State Department emails were intentionally deleted by her. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if various people lied about their routines and the existence of email accounts. The threat of perjury would run from Clinton’s aides all the way up to Clinton herself.
JD
lucia:
What I read suggested Abedin sent and received emails from Weiner’s computer.
Abedin wouldn’t be able to forward an email from the classified server.
However, if a classified email were sent from the public State Department server, that’s a problem already. So whether Abedin forwarded it from Clinton’s private server or from a government account, it wouldn’t matter at that point. It’s the same issue with mishandling of classified information either way.
I’d guess the reports that this related to Clinton’s use of a private server are wrong.
SteveF: If Abedin lied to the FBI about her cooperation with them, then she is hardly a victim. She’s been a major source of embarrassment of the Clinton campaign for some time now. Clinton has more loyalty to her employees than I anticipated.
JD Ohio: This is hardly an endorsement of Clinton’s ethics on my part, but I think she’s smart enough to never do things like this herself. I think she tries to be at least one-degree removed from anything shady. Obviously I agree with you that perjury charges against a person or persons is a possible outcome here.
Lucia, I think we should interpret it as Comey’s trying to wreck Hillary’s election. When Bill Clinton was running for president, Lawrence Walsh sought an indictment on Oct 30.
My interpretation of events is:
Comey knows the fix is in, with no grand jury and lots of immunity agreements.
Any announcement to recommend indictment would be depicted as the FBI’s interfering with an election.
On top of that, this interference would not lead to a prosecution.
So he announces no indictment, while taking the ordinarily unprofessional step of declaring the suspect a criminal by giving detailed information in public about what was uncovered.
With this Comey kept the FBI formally out, while meting some punishment.
This new announcement is probably unnecessary as well, but it gives Comey some degree of cover from the attacks he is taking within the FBI.
I’m surprised by the level of support for the idea that Republicans should concede the presidential race and go with ‘Don’t give Clinton a blank check’. They cite the 1996 race as evidence, but people are forgetting what the polls were saying then. If they had Trump’s numbers, there would have been celebrations in Republican campaigns. Some were predicting Clinton by 20, and John Zogby became famous for getting the final number right.
Carrick,
“She’s been a major source of embarrassment of the Clinton campaign for some time now.”
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Please remember that Hillary described Adedin as “another daughter”.
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Yes, people covering for the Clinton’s illegal activities end up embarrassing themselves. But no worry, by the time Hillary takes office, Huma will be safe from prosecution. And don’t forget the power of the pardon.
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Seriously Carrick, the Clintons are corrupt criminals, even if they take the White House again.
Carrick: “JD Ohio: This is hardly an endorsement of Clinton’s ethics on my part, but I think she’s smart enough to never do things like this herself.”
….
I obviously have no inside information, but I disagree. She is totally computer illiterate. She doesn’t know how to protect herself. Also, her staff appears to be computer stupid. Apparently Cheryl Mills & Huma Abedin used their real names as part of their email addresses. Being such high level people, that is very stupid. Even I cover myself and never use my real name.
…..
Reasonable speculation by Carl Bernstein that I tend to agree with: “We don’t know what this means yet except that it’s a real bombshell. And it is unthinkable that the Director of the FBI would take this action lightly, that he would put this letter forth to the Congress of the United States saying there is more information out there about classified e-mails and call it to the attention of congress unless it was something requiring serious investigation.”
See http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/10/28/bernstein_fbi_would_not_reopen_case_unless_new_evidence_was_a_real_bombshell.html
JD
MikeN,
I don’t see why we should interpret this as Comey trying to wreck Hillary’s election. Investigators not under Comey were investigating Weiner. They found stuff. Those people at a minimum know the stuff exists. Comey is told about it. I don’t know how Comey could do anything other than have the FBI look at it.
Comey previously told Congress his people were no longer looking at emails. That is no longer true. And he reported his interpretation of the results of the investigation based on emails that were available previously. That preliminary interpretation is something he has to go back on. He know has to say: He has no interpretation until such time as his investigators have seen these new emails.
It’s only fair that people and Congress know that what Comey previously said– and which was widely reported– is no longer true.
It’s certainly not Comey’s fault that Weiners sent dick pictures to a 15 year o ld nor that Weiner got caught when he did, nor that this other non-FBI group found emails. I really don’t think at this point Comeny had much other choice (whether or not he is partisan.)
Lucia,
“sent dick pictures to a 15 year old”
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Welcome to Clinton-world. Here’s the thing: the Clinton’s are 1) corrupt, 2) liars), 3) willfully hurt the people who work for them, and 4) don’t give a sh!t. I would consider voting for the devil instead if I thought Congress could hold him in check. There is no hope Congress will ever hold the Clintons in check.
I just realized. People have already started voting. I don’t think the DNC would be able to change candidates at this point regardless. I guess if Hillary gets elected and goes down over this we’ve got President Kaine.
Bleh. Still, might be an improvement over Hillary.
mark,
Don’t count your chickens.
But I agree, once early voting starts, it’s too late to change the ballot.
DeWitt,
I know… 🙂
Lucia, it is fair that people know that as far as the election is concerned, but I think Comey could have kept quiet. I wonder if anyone at DOJ was notified before Congress.
Mark
” I guess if Hillary gets elected and goes down over this we’ve got President Kaine.”
.
Ya well, less corrupt. More extremely left of center, for sure. At least he would be less likely to compromise national security for personal financial gain; he seems not deeply corrupt, and besides, he has no political slush-fund to support.
Imagine the outrage from Trump supporters if the IRS director said the IRS was auditing Trump’s tax return to see if he had broke the law and didn’t know when the investigation would be completed.
We don’t yet know whether Trump is a criminal or not.
MikeN,
I buy the idea that if Comey had kept quiet, AND the investigation produced notorious results, AND it was discovered that they were reviewing these things before the election AND didn’t say anything, it would be far worse.
MikeN
My guess if he had, the existence of these emails would have leaked. Plenty of people not under Clinton control must know about them– those investigating Weiner are certainly going to include non-FBI, non-federal employees. There is high probability some are– let me just say it…. Republicans.
The existance of those emails was going to leak.
Lucia, we already have leaks that Hillary’s server contained highly classified material at Top Secret level, that should not have been in department e-mail to begin with. We also have leaks that Hillary was ignoring requirements to keep other devices out of SCIF, and that she has no ability to look at e-mail if it involves use of a password. We also have a leak that Sidney Blumenthal sent highly classified information TO Hillary, that was likely NSA intercepts, which he should not have had. What’s one more person having access to classified information on one more insecure device?
Max, Trump told us that the IRS is auditing his tax returns, and he is using that as an excuse for not releasing them.
Comey to me is hard to figure. There are many aspects of his handling of this matter that are puzzling. (For instance, not having a word for for word transcript of Clinton questions and announcing result of his investigation almost immediately after having questioned Clinton)
….
My best guess is that he is doing SOME investigation but not an inordinate amount and at the same time, he is playing politics by trying not to irritate Obama too much. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wrote the current email letter to Congress without consulting Lynch so that it would be out there before Lynch and Obama could push back against him — which is to his credit.
….
A recent article had some very negative things to say about Comey:
….
According to an interview transcript given to The Daily Caller, provided by an intermediary who spoke to two federal agents with the bureau last Friday, agents are frustrated by Comey’s leadership.
“This is a textbook case where a grand jury should have convened but was not. That is appalling,†an FBI special agent who has worked public corruption and criminal cases said of the decision. “We talk about it in the office and don’t know how Comey can keep going.â€
The agent was also surprised that the bureau did not bother to search Clinton’s house during the investigation.
“We didn’t search their house. We always search the house. The search should not just have been for private electronics, which contained classified material, but even for printouts of such material,†he said.
“There should have been a complete search of their residence,†the agent pointed out. “That the FBI did not seize devices is unbelievable. The FBI even seizes devices that have been set on fire.â€
……..
Also Joe DiGenova, a former U.S. Attorney stated that:
” “People are starting to talk. They’re calling their former friends outside the bureau asking for help. We were asked to day to provide legal representation to people inside the bureau and agreed to do so and to former agents who want to come forward and talk. Comey thought this was going to go away.â€
He explained, “It’s not. People inside the bureau are furious. They are embarrassed. They feel like they are being led by a hack but more than that that they think he’s a crook. They think he’s fundamentally dishonest. They have no confidence in him. The bureau inside right now is a mess.â€
He added, “The most important thing of all is that the agents have decided that they are going to talk.†See
http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/17/exclusive-fbi-agents-say-comey-stood-in-the-way-of-clinton-email-investigation/
JD
MikeN
Do you think that’s the relevant question? I don’t. If you think that– rather than something else– is the relevant question, why do you think it? (Real question.)
I don’t see how leaking of the existence of these e-mails would have mattered to the campaign. Only Comey’s statement makes an impact. I do think that the news today amounts to another person having access to classified e-mails on another device. What do you think is more relevant about today’s news?
JD, I think Comey is being blamed for things done by the Justice Department. Does the FBI grant immunity? Do they impanel a grand jury?
We covered the lack of transcripts with Tom Brady. As I said at the time, my source was from a work of fiction. It turns out to be based on reality. It’s just what they do.
MikeN (Comment #153497)
October 28th, 2016 at 4:59 pm
Max, Trump told us that the IRS is auditing his tax returns, and he is using that as an excuse for not releasing them.
____
Oh I know that, Mike. But imagine the IRS director in a public statement saying the tax audit would clear up the question of whether Trump is guilty of wrongdoing. He wouldn’t be saying anything untrue, but he’s implying Trump may be a crook.
For the record, I think the significance of Comey releasing this information now is related to the certainty it would get released by the Republicans if he had not. I don’t think you can read much more into the tea leaves than this. If this eruatpts into another nothingburger, it could be the end of Comey.
For a different take than the (hopefull one for Republicans):
Why Fbi Director Made Clinton Email Announcement Now
THere is a tweet by Kurt Eishenwald about there being just three emails. That one’s been withdrawn.
I think Comey owes the country more details.
SteveF: You’re living in a fantasy world if you think Trump is any less corrupt than Clinton. Neither of them should be running for office.
A People’s History Of Donald Trump’s Business Busts And Countless Victims.
JD,
I agree. Thanks for your thoughts and the link, more to chew on.
MikeN
I’m puzzled. If leaking the existence of the emails wouldn’t matter the the campaign, then Comey’s announcement shouldn’t either. The harm comes from people knowing yet another trove exists, and that the FBI hasn’t looked that them and they could contain… who knows what?
If people knowing the new emails exists can’t harm her campaing, I don’t know how Comey’s announcement can be seen as intended to harm Hillary’s campaign.
Why do you think this? Real question. Because I think people knowing there is yet another trove— and this isn’t even wikileaks, the Rooosians or anything else, has an impact.
The potential that Hillary, Huma or others committed perjury when saying these emails did not exist.
From Carrick link about why FBI made announcement now: “Why did FBI Director James Comey shock Washington on Friday with an announcement that the FBI “has learned of the existence of emails†related to Hillary Clinton’s private email server, and what does it mean?
The truth is Comey didn’t have a choice. Because the new information followed his sworn testimony about the case, Comey was obligated by Department of Justice rules to keep the relevant committees apprised.”
….
Myself I am very skeptical that Justice Dept. Rules played much of a role. Clinton has lied and cheated her way to the top, and there is a very good chance that she will be the FBI’s boss soon. That being the case, people protecting their rear-ends could find a way to wait 2 weeks (or maybe never) before making public that additional emails have been discovered. On my end, my speculative suspicion is that there is much more to it than rules and that something big that can’t be hidden motivated this letter very close to the election.
JD
Lucia, I think also a case can be made for perjury based on what’s already been released.
Comey’s announcement matters because he is head of the FBI. There is a difference between the existence of more e-mails, leaked by people within the FBI, to ‘FBI director announces reopening of investigation’.
The former does have some impact, but it is the same as the DNC e-mails or Wikileaks. I think if the DNC were voicemails, that would have had no impact, but people just heard e-mails and thought they were the same thing. All of them had the impact prepared by Trump with ‘Crooked Hillary’.
MikeN: “JD, I think Comey is being blamed for things done by the Justice Department. Does the FBI grant immunity? Do they impanel a grand jury?”
….
Almost certainly, in normal instances, the FBI’s recommendations are given great weight by the Justice Dept. and the FBI and Justice Dept. work together very closely. I would point out that the FBI is not technically supposed to decide whether someone should be prosecuted, but it was Comey who stated that he didn’t believe there was a good criminal case against Clinton. I didn’t see any evidentiary comments made by Lynch.
JD
I think the Justice Department gave out the immunity agreements, which were unnecessary if they had a grand jury operating. The decision not to have a grand jury also was by dictate of Justice, as it allowed Clinton to say she was not a ‘target’ of the investigation.
MikeM
I didn’t say his announcement doesn’t matter. I’m just saying other things matter too.
And in this case, the existence of these emails was going to be leaked regardless. Since leaking was inevitable, his saying nothing wasn’t going to help Hillary– and could harm her more than his saying they were looking at them. In fact, he can now say they looked at them and it was … “Yawn…”. But had he said nothing, and then they leaked… really bad for Hillary.
Carrick,
“You’re living in a fantasy world if you think Trump is any less corrupt than Clinton. Neither of them should be running for office.”
.
We can agree on the second part.
.
I have many flaws, but living in a fantasy world is not one of them. Trump is a liar, a fool, a buffoon, and wildly misinformed about factual reality. Hillary, OTOH, is very informed, a pathological lair, and profoundly corrupt. She does bad things to decent people.
.
Pick your poison.
.
But please don’t lecture me about living in a fantasy world; I am quite sure I have seen a good deal more of the world than you have.
FWIW, I read here that Kellyanne Conway agrees with the Clinton campaign on MSNBC that more information needs to be released. I have not (and may not bother to) verified claim.
Maybe this won’t wait till after the election? I don’t know. I don’t see how the FBI can release much more info, if the emails are classified. It’s hard to imagine what he can say without guessing what he’s got, and I’m not sure how good my guesses are.
Lucia, I don’t see much damage from Hillary if something had leaked. The news is not more serious than what is already known.
Rush Limbaugh’s theory is that this is planned by Comey who will then come back and say nothing to see here, distracting from Wikileaks, but I haven’t seen anything substantial in Wikileaks to require that.
Next shoe to drop, in May, someone who recorded Trump for about ten hours volunteered to give the campaign what he had.
With 10 days to go before the election, Comey sends a letter to Congress saying in effect the FBI has new information that may or may not be evidence of wrongdoing by somebody, including Hillary maybe, but the FBI may or may not be able to determine whether the evidence is significant before the election.
What the hell is going on here! Unless Comey was under a legal obligation to keep Congress informed about every new piece of potential evidence, why did he open himself up to charges of trying to rig the election. Yes, I said it, RIG the election.
Comey owes it to himself and the American public to get to the bottom of this and fast.
Mark Bofill,
If the content of the emails is classified, then there is no way the FBI can release much information. Hillary will be playing out the clock, as she has been for the last several weeks. The power to pardon, the ability to control federal investigations, and the power to prosecute (or not) cures all corruption. Watch and see.
MikeN,
Yeah. Just today I read fresh reports claiming Assange has a new bombshell that will send Hillary to jail. Seems to me I’ve been hearing this claim for awhile now. I’m no longer holding my breath…
There are now more hits for ‘Donald Trump rapist’ than “Hannibal Buress’. Vastly more for ‘Bill Clinton rapist’.
Surprisingly, there are now fewer for ‘Bill Cosby rapist’.
Max, while I think he could have avoided saying anything if he was so inclined, I agree with Lucia that he was required to do so, because he had previously told Congress the investigation was complete.
MikeN
Well…. we’ll never be able to A/B test that. 🙂
Max_OK,
You’re a Hillary supporter … right? (Real Q). Are you suggesting the election is… might be… uhmmm rigged?! Also real question.
Because, if I understand correctly, Trump suggesting it might be rigged by a biased media was supposed to be some horrifyingly unAmerican ‘thing’. But if it can be “rigged” by people like the FBI directory then it seems to me one can’t really say that suggesting it can be rigged is “unAmerican”, or horrifying and so on.
Thanks SteveF.
I still can’t figure Comey. It seems to me that he’d have to know that. Why bring this forward now. I’m with JD on being skeptical that he couldn’t have avoided it. Perhaps he is hoping that merely the announcement may do sufficient damage to Clinton’s campaign to keep her out of the WH? It doesn’t sound right to me, but I need more time to digest I think (nothing sounds right about this to me right now).
lucia (Comment #153506)
October 28th, 2016 at 5:45 pm
The potential that Hillary, Huma or others committed perjury when saying these emails did not exist.
______
Potential ?
>because we have plenty of irrefutable evidence of Donald Trump treating people poorly.
Carrick we have plenty of irrefutable evidence of Hillary Clinton treating people poorly.
Start at page 43:
https://vault.fbi.gov/hillary-r.-clinton/hillary-r.-clinton-part-04-of-04/view
There is also a report that her security detail was gleeful when she broke her elbow. That is how much they felt mistreated by her.
We also have audiotape of Hillary laughing about her rapist client(albeit assigned to her as a public defender) passing a lie detector.
Carrick, John Podesta doesn’t think you have looked into the issue thoroughly.
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/23327
“Makes it seem like she consciously went to the home server for security reasons which would fall apart under scrutiny. “
Lucia,
Thanks. This may be, that Comey realized for one reason or another that he had no choice. Another idea that occurs to me is that maybe there’s a situation inside the FBI. I read anecdotal reports that a lot of people disagreed with his decision not to indict; maybe for internal political reasons he didn’t have a choice.
lucia (Comment #153521)
October 28th, 2016 at 6:22 pm
You’re a Hillary supporter … right?
Are you suggesting the election is… might be… uhmmm rigged?!
____
Yes, I support Hillary.
You may have misinterpreted my comment. I said ” why did he open himself up to charges of trying to rig the election. Yes, I said it, RIG the election.”
If he was compelled to inform Congress, he should say so. Otherwise, he will be accused of trying to rig the election. By saying “yes, I said it, RIG,” I simply meant to show I am not afraid to say “rig.”
Max, read Carrick’s link above from Newsweek. Comey did say that.
https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/792050013555810304/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Most surprising part in Carrick’s link, was the ad. $1.25 a week for a magazine that doesn’t even print anymore?
Mark Boffil
I think assuming his motivation is to keep Clinton out of the Whitehouse seems unlikely. At best he might not be biased on way or the other, but his being against Clinton seems extremely unlikely.
SteveF:
Trump’s also a fraudster and a huckster, who treats other people in a vile fashion. You left that part out, which I interpret as “giving the Republican a free pass.”
A People’s History Of Donald Trump’s Business Busts And Countless Victims.
Technically I’m not lecturing you. I have no idea whether you have or haven’t “seen a great deal more” than I have, but this is totally condescending on your part either way. I have no doubt you’ve had an “interesting life”. But so have I (much more interesting that I would have liked at times).
MikeN:
That read more like Abedin was responsible for the protocol breaches. It’s a pivot away from the original anecdote. And it’s still anecdotal information, so not exactly “irrefutable”.
John Podesta doesn’t think any such thing of course. What do you see in this that shows I haven’t looked at the issue thoroughly?
Maybe you aren’t as familiar with my views as you think.
Carrick (Comment #153503)
October 28th, 2016 at 5:34 pm
I think Comey owes the country more details.
_____
MikeN (Comment #153520)
October 28th, 2016 at 6:21 pm
Max, while I think he could have avoided saying anything if he was so inclined, I agree with Lucia that he was required to do so, because he had previously told Congress the investigation was complete.
_____
Carrick, Comey sure does owe the country more details. There must be more that he could add.
_______
MikeN, I prefer to think Comey felt he had to write the letter. I hope he will explain why. An explanation could stem the speculation.
MikeN:
Mostly false.
See also this.
Lucia,
Yes. Since typing that I’ve come to the same conclusion. Makes no sense to me. My reasoning is, he didn’t indict her [recommend indictment]. Who cares if it ultimately stuck, it’d have ruined her campaign. It makes little sense to me to imagine that he’s decided to torpedo her now.
.
I guess that’s part of what baffles me. I can’t find a way to construe self interest in Comey’s actions. Who knows; maybe the guy really isn’t a political hack after all and is just genuinely trying to execute his job. I’m probably a fool, but I’m not going to start denying now that Comey struck me as being sincere at the Congressional hearing where he laid it all out and announced that he wasn’t recommending indictment – it was definitely my impression at the time anyway that he was for-reals. I’ve come to doubt it after listening to reports of how his people think he’s a political hack. But who knows.
.
[Edit: getting pretty sloppy with my pronouns. He [comey] didn’t torpedo her [clinton]. Who cares if it [the indictment] actually stuck, it [the indictment] would have ruined her [clinton’s] campaign. There!]
The question here is not who is the worst person in the race. The question is who a candidate will bring into their cabinet and take advice from and what their real positions on the issues are.
If you like Biden over say Pence, then by all means vote for a woman who even Bob Woodward described last weekend as corrupt. If you like Eric Holder over Rudy Giuliani vote for her royal highness. If you like Carson or Gingrich over Kaine or Slick Willy himself, you must vote accordingly.
Really people, grow up, most people who know Trump personally don’t think he is much out of the ordinary. Trump is unfiltered even though he’s been getting more disciplined. That’s really all this is.
David Young,
I’m still voting Johnson.
Carrick, you have said here many times that Hillary’s server was for the purpose of having better security.
Podesta declared that that reasoning doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Carrick, your links confirm what I said about Hillary laughing about her client(not the victim).
Why do you think this? I think it is plausible, perhaps even likely, based on what he announced to the public which he didn’t need to announce, and some later statements that were consistent with the theory I laid out above.
MAX_OK, here’s what I think Comey should produce:
• How many emails are they looking at.
• Time frame for reviewing the emails.
• Rough description of the nature of the investigation (but not considered binding). (E.g., Clinton email server; handling of classified data; “inconsistencies” with prior testimony).
Mark Bofill: I totally accept that Comey is performing his job in this very highly stressful period as well as he can. I’d be really careful about putting too much faith in reports. I’d suggesting putting more faith in him than in those news sources.
Correction, the Judicial Watch investigation I mentioned above is included in the FBI reports. So that is not likely to be the source of the new e-mails. Note that the Judicial Watch investigation also likely uncovered classified information in another location, with Hillary’s server as a likely source.
MikeN
It seems unlikely that if he was against her he would have told Congress that her behavior was not something one would be indicted for. Ordinarily the FBI doesn’t comment on that sort of stuff and he could simply say nothing about that. But he chose to say that.
Precisely: he made announcements that helped Hillary when he didn’t need to do so. In fact: he made announcements that helped her when he didn’t need to do so and those annoucemenct materially helped her campaign . So it’s hard to imagine he is actually against her.
Beyond that: even if we don’t look at his past decisions to help Hillary when he didn’t need to do so: Comey’s also a political appointee in the Obama administration. That makes it rather unlikely he is against members of the Obama administration– either current or former.
There are other factors– but I really don’t see why one would think it likely he’s actually against Hillary.
Thanks Carrick. I’m running lightly with that theory of Comey until / unless I see or think of something that overturns it. But it’s good to hear you think the same. Maybe I’m not completely nuts. Tee Hee. [Tee Hee didn’t sound as nuts as I was shooting for. How about ~cackles insanely~!]
~cackles insanely~!
MikeN:
Yes, and I think that is still a plausible explanation for her doing this.
Podesta, who as we know had a bit of trouble with computer security himself, doesn’t explain why he thinks this would fail under scrutiny. Seems like a totally valid concern to me.
(I do think not wanting to have to carry two phones–her “official” reason” was BS.)
Note that recently hacked Podesta was responding to this comment:
Clinton echoed this reasoning at the Commander in Chief Forum:
MikeN:
You are right (I misread what you were claiming). But this shows Clinton to be inhuman…exactly why? People don’t always laugh because they think something is “ha-ha” funny.
That the client passed a lie detector is very sad and makes me suspect whether the lie detector test was done properly. (I know one case involving child sexual abuse of somebody I know, where the perpetrator ended up getting off, that reads something like this case.)
MikeN, thanks for the link to Comey’s letter to Congress. I had read the letter but it was good to read it again.
Comey says he is writing to supplement his comments on the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server because during a different investigation the FBI has found e-mails that may be pertinent, but he won’t know if this new material is significant until it is examined, which will take an amount of time that can’t be determined at present.
OK, Comey may be responsible for keeping Congress informed about what the FBI is working on. If that’s a part of his job, then he’s just doing his job.
On this matter, what is Comey’s responsibility to the public?
While we’re sharing anecdotes, here’s one on Assange.
It’s a first-person account. YYMV.
Don’t know if everyone’s seen this (Comey to FBI employees):
Carrick (Comment #153539)
October 28th, 2016 at 7:49 pm
MAX_OK, here’s what I think Comey should produce:
• How many emails are they looking at.
• Time frame for reviewing the emails.
• Rough description of the nature of the investigation (but not considered binding). (E.g., Clinton email server; handling of classified data; “inconsistencies†with prior testimony).
________
Carrick, thanks. I wish I had something to add. I suppose it would be too much to ask for a deadline.
Is it just me, or does this read as if the FBI doesn’t actually have the Weiner emails? Not rhetorical. [Well, OK. Maybe it was rhetorical. I would still welcome opinions.] It sort of reads that way to me.
mark bofill: I think you are right–it doesn’t appear they even have access to the emails at this point. I think it’s certainly the case this was a fail:
Misleading impression. [check mark]
Mark, it looks like they have lots of e-mails, and they have to investigate whether they are classified, or perhaps some other detail.
Huma Abedin has already told the FBI that she forwarded e-mails to other accounts, because it was difficult to print from State system. So the existence of the e-mails alone should not be a surprise.
marc bofill,
I think there is plenty of ambiguity there. They could have them but the number is so huge there is no way any team could have sifted through them. So, the can’t really say much about them.
Carrick, Podesta doesn’t explain why it would fail, but he thinks it was obvious, presumably because by that point he had been informed of the real reason.
You are right that he doesn’t know much about security. His password was p@ssw0rd
Russian hackers might not be responsible after all. It does explain the involvement of Fenton Communications.
Thank you, Lucia, MikeN, and Carrick.
MikeN
I think the fact those emails existed now is rather surprising. Yes, she told people she forwarded them; but it’s rather amazing Huma didn’t delete them.
MikeN:
This isn’t that obvious to me. First, people rarely base decisions just on one factor.
Secondly, the use of the private server for security reasons remains a very good reason. It sounds like Podesta doesn’t think that to be true, but so what? He appears to be a computer neophyte himself.
MikeN,
Give it up. 🙂 You’re not going to persuade Carrick.
Of course it’s not obvious to you. You are not part of the campaign, and you did not conduct internal investigations of all weaknesses of Hillary Clinton, including on the e-mail server.
How do we know that HRC’s server wasn’t hacked? From what I’ve heard and read, there wasn’t enough (any?) software protection on the server to know whether it was hacked or not.
You can’t really know it wasn’t hacked. They found no evidence on the server it was hacked. Though the Judicial Watch investigation appears to have found evidence it was. It is also possible they just walked in and copied the server. Datto backup is very secure, but the server that was in a bathroom in Colorado sounds like someone could break in and no one would ever know.
Also, Marc Perkel reported last year that clintonemail.com is using a third party spam filtering service. So people at this company would have access to Clinton’s emails. It is not known if they were using the service when she was Secretary of State.
I suspect the list of presidents believed to have been financially corrupt in office would be pretty short. I can’t think of any, but maybe someone here can.
I would put Lyndon Johnson on a list of presidents who seem likely to have been corrupt before taking office, and of course there’s Spiro Agnew, but he wasn’t president.
We seemed to be faced with a choice between two very troubling candidates and with either of them, the hope is that the clouds will part, sunbeams will descend on whoever gets the job and they will suddenly be honest, well informed, intelligent, not cackle, thoughtful and neither patronizing nor insulting of the public intelligence. A lot to ask from these two.
Maybe this is nonsense and becoming president doesn’t cure corruption. It clearly doesn’t improve character.
Reading the wikileaked emails from those who worked with her has been interesting in the sense that my view of her seems so closely to track the views of the people who worked with her, at least on her ineptitude, her really stunning inability to deal with anything really challenging. Her total bungling of the response to the public disclosure of her private email system is certainly typical.
but my God, Trump??
MikeN: You don’t have to be a member of Team Clinton to have some idea how server security works. And Podesta was the communications director, and not an expert on server security.
Regarding a physical break in: the server was located in Clinton’s private residence in New York. She was Secretary of State, so there would have been physical security provided by the Secret Service for that period.
By the way according to FoxNews Podesta’s email was hacked by phishing.
(My advise is never follow a link from your email to reset your password, unless you requested the password reset yourself. Generally, always go directly to the website.)
mark bofill:
Oh you definitely can, but I would need a better argument than “because Podesta”. 😛
DeWitt: Generally the system log files would reflect that a break-in occurred. Depending on how the network was configured, and whether the people who hypothetically broke-in to the server in got root-privileges, it might be possible to hide one’s tracks.
When she was Secretary of State, the Secret Service was providing protection at her home. Lots of people mocked this defense, but I think the physical security is helpful in her case. However, in 2013, Platte River took over, and their servers were less secure.
Podesta is not an expert on server security nor does he need to be. He was not evaluating server security, but the totality of Clinton’s public statements about her e-mail server. He thought the defense to be ridiculous that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, not because he learned about server security, but because of what he and Robby Mook learned about Clinton and how exposed she was on the issue.
Carrick, it’s worse than that. Podesta identified the phishing e-mail. Someone on Clinton’s IT team told him it was real!
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/34899#efmAAGAAbAHLAIUAWxAXH
“SteveF (Comment #153512)
Carrick,“You’re living in a fantasy world if you think Trump is any less corrupt than Clinton. Neither of them should be running for office.†We can agree on the second part.”
–
?
Of course they should be running for office.
if they want to, it is their right to do so.
Very few people should have voted for either of them in the primaries is what you really mean to say.
Being corrupt is part of the job description, being proven corrupt is not.
angech: “Being corrupt is part of the job description, being proven corrupt is not.”
.
Angech, you are reminding us that this is unfolding in front of a world audience with hands over mouths. Dressing room recordings about grabbing p****y, untold political dirty scheming and half the country at each other’s jugular. One of these candidates will have to shake hands with your prime minister. Keep hand sanitizer close.
Hillary Clinton calls on FBI to release full and complete facts immediately
“Voting is underway, so the American people deserve to get the full and complete facts immediately,” Clinton said at a brief news conference in Des Moines, Iowa, adding it was “imperative that the bureau explain this issue in question, whatever it is, without any delay.”
http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/28/politics/fbi-reviewing-new-emails-in-clinton-probe-director-tells-senate-judiciary-committee/
______
I guess Comey could respond by saying he has said all he can say until the FBI has examined all the new materials and he doesn’t know when they will finish. But I hope he can do better than that.
Ron Graf (Comment #153568) October 29th, 2016 at 12:07 am
“One of these candidates will have to shake hands with your prime minister. Keep hand sanitizer close.”
Remind your president to count her/his fingers afterwards to make sure they are all there.
Interesting take here on what Comey’s letter does and doesn’t say.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/memo-press-what-comeys-letter-does-and-doesnt-mean
Writer says investigation wasn’t reopened because it was never closed.
Hillary,
I think Hillary demanding a full release of what the FBI has fall under “situational irony”. The entire problem would not exist had she provided all requested emails in the first place. Her demand that others do what she refused to do is just… well… situational irony.
Lucia,
“situational irony” is pretty good. thanks.
Max_OK
Yep. But Comey’s wording to congress certainly gave the voting public the impression it was completed and so his conclusions that Hillary had not committed any crime were based on a completed investigation.
So now, he is telling us it is not complete.
Of course people were confused about the “opened”, “closed” vs. “reopened” issue because Comey’s previous testimony to Congress gave people the impression it was done and so they assumed it was “closed”. That was not the case. If we interpret “not closed” as “Hillary still being under investigation” then the wrong impression was given in the past— and that wrong impression was favorable to Hillary.
Now, it may be substantively true that for all practical purposes the investigation was “done”. But turns out, it wasn’t “done”. Hillary supporters who want to quibble about “re-open” really aren’t actually making any substantive points.
The fact is: The emails are back to being investigating. The investigation is ongoing.
angech, I can well remember coming a bit unglued when Peter Jennings gave Ross Perot a hard time for ‘cluttering’ up an election with his candidacy. He implied that no-one should run who was unlikely to win.
I agree completely with you that anyone who wants to run, should.
I think the mystery now is why no-one substantial is running. I wondered at the time why Sam Nunn didn’t run. He was asked and i think said that he didn’t think he cold handle the persecution.
Is it possible that there was an initial investigation to determine whether a prosecutable offense had occurred prior to the onset of the investigation and now we are seeing an investigation arising out of the earlier investigation itself including misrepresentations of the facts and perhaps lying to the FBI.
Yes, I’m shocked. Lying to the FBI?
j ferguson,
It’s because we don’t have real national politics anymore. We have National Political Theatre.
Andrew
j ferguson,
I think we just don’t know yet. I’m guessing there are
(a) enough emails to require some time to sort through.
(b) at least a few that indicate that they must be looked at.
With respect to (b): they may be duplicates of other emails. But the mere fact that the other trove exists means they need to be looked at. The job may be very, very, very boring. But it’s still going to take time.
(Similarly, people assigned the job of going through FOIA’d documents to be sure the released ones don’t invade privacy– redacting as required– have a very boring job.)
Hi Lucia,
Of course there could be the classic where Huma and Cheryl Mills discuss the email server months before Cheryl told the FBI that she’d learned about it. An FBI person has apparently revealed that none of the emails are to or from Hillary – sort of hard to believe, but there it is.
It would be pretty funny, to me at least, if some of the emails which died unread on Cheryl Mill’s laptop via what seems like a really crazy agreement she reached with the FBI were copied on the Huma-Weiner machine. I don’t know why there is something which smacks of the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile to this, but…
j ferguson,
We just don’t know. It’s possible few or no emails are to Hillary because she is computer incompetent. Also, she may have begin relying on assistants printing and bringing stuff to her long ago. I know people at work who got in that habit. Generally, they were in management before email really came in, and they were always in the habit of “paper”. They had support staff, in some way that was a “prestige” thing and they never stopped having communications go through staff.
It’s sort of “take a letter, Maria” type behavior. Now a days, the guy in that soung would type his own dang letter. But “way back” people might not type all that quickly, and the pattern was to have someone else type anyway.
Hillary is just old enough that may be the pattern she was in.
A consensus seems to be evolving that Comey would never have done this at this time without something momentous having been discovered.
j ferguson, I agree Comey would not have made the announcement without being presented something significant. Just the discovery of an overlooked device does not warrant “hold the presses.” And that Dem surrogates are speculating the emails are possibly all duplicates of one already reviewed seems implausible. But, if they are all dups, and Comey now announces that before the election he will anger both candidates, Clinton for elevating the topic in voter minds, and Trump for giving Hillary supporters the ability to say the investigation was thorough.
.
The highest likelihood of finding damaging emails would be on the top aid’s computer. They are the ones who distribute the orders but at the authority of the boss. So the thought Clinton can sever herself from her right hand is unrealistic.
Ron,
Whether what was found is “significant” likely depends on what one thinks is “significant”. But the fact is: Owing to previous testimony to congress, the voting public was under the impression that the investigation was complete and voters would be basing their votes on that information. However, the investigation is no longer complete.
I think it’s difficult to support the notion that Comey should have just shut up and left the voters under the impression the investigation is complete when it is not.
In anycase: I think the story would have leaked if he’d tried to do that. It’s not as if the only person who would know the investigation is no longer complete is Comey. Someone would have leaked this. The story coming out as a leak with Comey “admitting” the investigation is ongoing but that he couldn’t say anything more would have been worse for Hillary. Many undecided voters would have seen that position as intended to protect Hillary and his not revealing stuff he can’t reveal as “doubling down”.
j ferguson:
Not so much where I’m looking:
What I’m seeing in WaPo and other sources suggests the FBI likely has no idea what is in the emails at this point, and whether there is anything new at all in them.
According to that narrative, Comey appears to have failed to follow FBI and DOJ rules.
And there appears to be a fair amount of self-serving behavior going on here: Comey appears to be trying to protect Comey’s legacy rather than the reputation of the FBI.
Still too early to predict which direction this will move the polls. (I remember that the Watergate investigation was on-going while Nixon was trouncing McGovern at the polls, so anything is possible.)
I’ll note again that Comey’s own words reenforces this narrative:
Hillary’s gambit demanding transparency is ballsy. Possible Comey replies:
1) We found new unsecured classified material.
2) Found previously encountered copies of classified material.
3) Attempted quid pro quo, or “pay for play.”
4) We will announce a status of investigation on Nov. 7.
5) We’ll make no more announcements until after the election.
6) We lost the device while transporting it over the Potomac River.
.
There are no good possibilities for Clinton. Given that the FBI took 7 months to look at the emails before, making an announcement Monday of an “all clear” would be incredible.
Ron Graf: “There are no good possibilities for Clinton.”
.
She is making the best of the situation. It is extremely unlikely that the FBI will finish with the new cache by Nov 8. So she calls for disclosure; that allows her to pretend she has nothing to fear and also to play the injured party. It could blow up on her if Comey uses her complaint as a reason to reveal damaging material before the investigation is complete. But it is a good bet that he will instead follow standard procedure.
It’s very simple. Comey was facing what amounts to a palace revolution. Lower level agents were about to go public. Making it known publicly that the investigation is still alive makes it harder for them to do so.
It appears that Lynch was informed of Comey’s plans to write a letter to Congress and Lynch didn’t want him to do it. So, he overrode her objections. That being the case, I believe there are very substantial issues raised by the emails — Comey wouldn’t have gone above Lynch’s head if it looked like only minor or trivial emails were at issue.
JD
JD Ohio: If the emails turn out to be a “nothing burger” would you still feel that Comey acted appropriately? (I’ve still seen nothing that suggests they even know what is in the emails at this point.)
The reports are saying the concern within the Justice Department over Comey’s actions goes way beyond Lynch. This story gives some backstory on that, and on previous behavior of the DOJ during election cycles:
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/james-comey-broke-with-loretta-lynch-and-justice-department-tradition
The fact the investigation remains an open one, and its implications for Comey’s behavior, isn’t just “word smithing”, as Lucia seems to be suggesting.
DeWitt,
If lower level agents were going to go public about the fact that the investigation was on going, Comey not doing so would be terrible for Clinton.
JD Ohio
Do you mean this most recent letter? Or back in August.
WRT FBI & Justice: I know FBI operates under the Jurisdiction of Jusitice. But does that mean Lynch is in anyway a “supervisor” or “boss” of Comey? (Real Q. ) That is: aren’t they supposed to be independent in some regard.
Also: does Lynch’s saying something “is” the protocol mean it is? (Also real question.) Is there some written protocol that covers what the FBI director is supposed to do under this situation where the head of the FBI gave sworn testimony that “X is true” and now “X is not true”? I can’t imagine there is.
My reaction to most of what the chattering classes are saying is that it’s just that: partisan chatter.
Lucia, ” But does that mean Lynch is in anyway a “supervisor†or “boss†of Comey? (Real Q. ) That is: aren’t they supposed to be independent in some regard.”
….
I don’t practice criminal law, but since the FBI is an investigatory agency, it seems as if it would have to have a boss, and that the Attorney General would be it. See this chart. https://www.justice.gov/agencies/chart
…..
Personally, although sometimes you would want an independent investigatory agency, in day-to-day matters, it seems that it would need supervision by someone with a bigger picture view. There are apparently customs and guidelines pertaining to politically sensitive matters. I am not personally aware that any of them have the force of law. For general perspective see http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/james-comey-broke-with-loretta-lynch-and-justice-department-tradition
JD
PS Talking about most recent letter.
Carrick
If the investigation is open, I don’t see how it’s appropriate for the American public to be given the impression that it is closed. If it is not closed, we shouldn’t have been given that false impression in the first place.
I should think people should be more upset that we were given the false impression all along rather than that people who thought the case was “closed” used the “wrong word”.
The argument over use of the term “re-opened” vs “back to active investigation” is word smithing.
It also seems to me that if Lynch is unhappy that Comey told Congress a case that has not been closed is back to active investigation, she certainly should have been equally upset that he told Congress the investigation was complete back in August. Maybe she was…Was she? (I’d have to google.)
Carrick: “JD Ohio: If the emails turn out to be a “nothing burger†would you still feel that Comey acted appropriately?”
No.
JD
lucia,
My impression is that the agents were about to go public with their dissatisfaction with Comey’s handling of the investigation, not with the fact that the investigation hadn’t been closed. They would have to provide details. Doing that for an ongoing investigation might be more than the agents are willing to risk.
Ron Graf (Comment #153594)
October 29th, 2016 at 12:13 pm
“There are no good possibilities for Clinton.”
____
I wouldn’t be so sure. If the situation is seen as unfair to her, it could (a) energize her base and (b) get sympathy votes from undecided voters. At worst they would end up with Kane as President, who I’m sure would be preferable to Trump.
I can tell you as a Hillary supporter I am infuriated over what Comey did. Nothing will keep me from voting now.
Max: “I am infuriated over what Comey did. Nothing will keep me from voting now.”
.
Nothing? (real question.)
Ron, I exaggerated when I said nothing will keep me from voting. Unforeseen circumstances could keep me from voting, dropping dead for example, although I hear some dead do vote.
DeWitt,
The specifics of their complains doesn’t matter to my point which is that if they were going to go public about the investigation, then the fact that the investigation was ongoing, active and, certainly not closed, and that agents were in the process of looking at new emails was going to come out.
That point wasn’t going to remain secret even if the agents main concern was Comey’s handling of the case.
I don’t see how it was remotely possible the fact that the FBI was looking at emails was not going to come out within a week. I don’t know how Hillary’s supporters can think it would be better 6 days from now rather than yesterday.
Max,
Democrats can’t have it both ways with Comey. If you’re infuriated about Comey now, it means you accept the idea that Comey’s original statement was also politically motivated and now he’s turned his coat.
Could the emails numbered “in the tens of thousands” be part of the missing/deleted 33.000 ones?
http://nypost.com/2016/10/25/hillarys-33000-emails-might-not-be-missing-after-all/
Alright. I’m not throwing stones at anyone’s outrage. I will admit to being pleased that some Hillary supporters can now walk a mile in the shoes of Trump supporters. Unless you believe the timing of the tape and the various women accusing Trump was coincidental; to those all I can say (in true Southern idiom) is, well, bless you heart.
.
Sucks, doesn’t it. Welcome to 21’rst century politics.
mark bofill,
For full effect, I think you need to say “Oh. Honey. Bless your heart.”
Heh. My idiomatic Southern was a little too authentic. The spelling error was unintentional. I said
and I meant
🙂 My wife tells me it’s early onset of the dementia.
.
[edit: Lucia, :> ]
Carrick, your Newsweek links said that Comey’s letter was following DOJ rules. Now they are saying it is against the rules.
Comey’s original statement was also if not against the rules very improper. If you are not indicting someone, you shouldn’t then make a public statement that the person is guilty. Then they have no means of defending themselves.
I’m sticking with my interpretation of Comey stuck between bad choices.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/debate-3-advice-drink-heavily/#comment-153478
I was wrong about his telling Congress before Justice, but they told him not to do it.
Did team Hillary get tipped off? Their story was ready quick, but not quick enough.
Declaring ‘no e-mails to or from Hillary’ suggests they did. This is the typical Clintonian evasion, because the e-mails uncovered are from Huma@State or Huma@clintonemail.com
to huma@yahoo , but the underlying messages being forwarded could be from Hillary. Judicial Watch released some from Hillary that were heavily redacted.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #153615)
October 29th, 2016 at 1:55 pm
Max,
Democrats can’t have it both ways with Comey. If you’re infuriated about Comey now, it means you accept the idea that Comey’s original statement was also politically motivated and now he’s turned his coat.
___
I haven’t concluded Comey’s letter was politically motivated.
I’m not sure about what motivated him. I am infuriated because the letter impugns Hillary’s reputation without a trial or even an indictment, here right on the eve of the election, potentially hurting her chances to win. Voting will be over in 10 days, not giving sufficient time for the FBI to review the new materials make a judgement.
While I am a Hillary supporter, I feel what is happening here would be unfair to anyone running for an office, whether I liked the candidate or not.
Max,
So you’re OK with Comey effectively clearing HRC of criminal behavior with a kid glove investigation in his original statement and thereby burnishing her reputation, but not with changing his mind based on new evidence? Comey was a weasel then and is still a weasel.
The FBI isn’t supposed to make judgements. They investigate and make recommendations to the AG. The AG can then accept or ignore those recommendations. Comey should never have made his original statement. That should have come from the AG.
Based on this, you should strike his original statement from the record as being premature and beyond his job description.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #153640)
October 29th, 2016 at 3:40 pm
Max,
So you’re OK with Comey effectively clearing HRC of criminal behavior with a kid glove investigation in his original statement and thereby burnishing her reputation, but not with changing his mind based on new evidence? Comey was a weasel then and is still a weasel.
____
Comey’s letter doesn’t say what you are saying. Sounds like your mind is made up, and you don’t trust Comey unless he changes his mind about Hillary.
Finally! An article that mentions who was running the Weiner investigation in the first place.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/10/28/fbi_has_more_clinton_emails_james_comey_says.html
“Weiner is being investigated by U.S. attorney Preet Bharara for having possibly sent sexually explicit text messages to a minor. He and Abedin, Clinton’s campaign co-chair, are separated”
That article also contains an update
(That update is from yesterday.)
So… we wait to hear what is on them! Clearly we need an update on the update. (And possibly to know who the senior official is….. )
New rumors:
http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/29/dc-attorney-fbi-never-destroyed-laptops-of-clinton-aides/
Lucia: “were not sent by Hillary Clinton”.
That makes me wonder why they would cause the investigation to be renewed, unless they say something about hiding or destroying evidence.
Mike M.
Yeah. But right now, it’s very difficult to sort out which statements are utterly partisan, which are rumors and so on. The “senior officials” aren’t named. Sometimes sources don’t want to mislead journalists because it doesn’t pay in the long run. But right now lots of partisans on both sides know winning the election less than 2 weeks does pay in the long run. So everything requires a big block of salt.
Carrick, why should we judge the appropriateness of Comey’s letter based on the contents of the e-mails?
If Comey knows the e-mails are a nothingburger then it is indeed inappropriate. If he is still investigating, then we should judge him based on whether it’s appropriate to say something while not knowing the results.
Max, Hillary is perhaps only able to run for President now because an independent counsel filed an indictment(that was later thrown out) on Oct 30 when her husband was running for President.
NY Time article is informative– more than most
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/us/politics/comey-clinton-email-justice.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur
The laptop and other devices were seized Oct 3.
There is some sort of legal authority to inspect contents, but evidently not read all the emails.
The FBI and Justice agreed to seek court approval to get permission to read the emails.
It appears at that point Comey felt Congress needed to be informed that something was going on, and Lynch thinks otherwise.
My take: it appears that Lynch also thinks not telling Congress would be seen as trying to withhold information from Congress. She wants it withheld but doesn’t want to be the one ‘responsible’ for with holding it. Presumably, she wants Comey to be the one to withhold it. She does not order him to withhold this information and he doesn’t.
It appears that currently, neither Comey nor Lynch nor anyone knows what’s in the emails. Not sure how little people are allowed to have read, but if they can’t read the emails, I would presume they can’t read the meta data and lots of other information. In which case, claims they weren’t from Hillary’s server and so on might be based on… vapor. Claims they must be important: likewise.
It seems Comey doesn’t know what the contents are. His decision is based on knowing that
(a) He told congress the FBI has stopped investigating emails and told them preliminary conclusions based on that decision.
(b) That is no longer true. The FBI and Justice have agreed to request permission to read this new batch of emails. That permission is being submitted to the courts (I guess.)
(c) He wants congress to know that situation as changed: They are now intending to investigate emails; this could change conclusions.
(I assume whoever gives permission will grant it. Presumably Justice and the FBI know whether they are likely to get permission.)
No one knows what that investigation will hold because they have not seen the emails.
Lucia,
“The laptop and other devices were seized Oct 3.”
.
It just keeps getting stranger and stranger. The FBI has the devices for 3+ weeks from a suspected sex criminal before they decide to read what is on them? Seems unlikely. Maybe they were scanning for deleted (incriminating) files belonging to Weiner, and stumble on a bunch of emails from Hillary’s server to Huma. Not sure why the FBI needs permission to read files that were under subpoena.
Lucia, if Justice were cooperating with FBI, then there would have been a grand jury, and they wouldn’t have handed out immunity agreements.
An alternate theory is being floated that hacker kimdotcom had notified people of how to get Hillary’s emails, and they realized everything would be coming out, so they unleashed the FBI to get ahead of the story.
Max, 14 years after a prosecutor dropped an indictment that tarnished George Bush and helped put Hillary in the White House, the FBI raided Curt Weldon’s house weeks before the election. Curt Weldon was investigating what Clinton friend Sandy Berger had stolen from the National Archives. The answer, which I doubt Weldon even suspected at that point, may have been that they had knowledge of terrorist plans to attack with airplanes(Bojinka happened during his presidency).
MikeN (Comment #153691)
October 29th, 2016 at 8:00 pm
Max, Hillary is perhaps only able to run for President now because an independent counsel filed an indictment(that was later thrown out) on Oct 30 when her husband was running for President.
______
Clintons have fought lots of battles. One reason I like Hillary is she is tough, a survivor.
Doesn’t give up. Another reason is she comes from a family of modest means and had to work for what she got. Warren is the same way.
SteveF,
I suspect they equipment was seized by the team in NY working on the Weiner case. Those people, I am sure, had authority to seize them and look at them in some sense. I don’t know precisely how much police can look at on computer equipment that is seized– we’ll need the lawyers to say. But presumably they can look at something. But possibly only in context of the sexting case? dunno.
In the process of looking at the laptop at all they probably saw stuff- and then realized this was now becoming relevant to the “Clinton’s server” case. So they probably informed those in the FBI working on that. These people are probably mostly in DC.
Why it tooks weeks for the DC side to decide they were going to get permission to look at the emails: I have no idea. They say the wheels of justice grind slowly, and perhaps those in Loretta Lynch’s department grind particularly slowly when the investigation involves Clinton. Or maybe this is the normal pace. Dunno.
But it appears Comey informed Congress after Justice and FBI has both agreed the emails were relevant, and they were going to take the step seek permission to read them. So: basically Comey decided to tell Congress that his previous testimony was no longer correct at the precise point when Comey’s report that the congress was no longer investigating ceased to be true.
But since they have not investigated the emails, they have no idea what is on them. When he said they re-initiated investigations that appears to be precisely what he meant. They’ve just started that. They may find nothing. They may find something.
MikeN
This is what the NYT story says:
I take the “authorities decided” to me an Justice and the F.B.I. agree to seek court authority to read the new emails.
This reads like a joint decision by Justice and F.B.I. But it’s not convening a grand jury.
Lucia,
I agree completely. I’ve quit looking to try to read deeper meaning into Comey’s statements and actions. I don’t think there’s any there to be read.
Rumors flying like mad. Hopefully on Monday some new light may be shed on some part of what’s going to happen before Nov 8’th.
[Edit: Literally a million people are reported as discussing Comey on Facebook. My impression is that it’s been this way since Friday afternoon.]
Could be hiding, or destroying evidence or lying to the FBI.
one of above. But, probably not Hillary. think her immunized associates.
I don’t buy that the Feds don’t have a pretty good idea what’s in the emails. If I were Comey i wouldn’t have taken the chance that they’re wedding plans and yoga lessons. If they were and after what he’s done, he’d look like an idiot.
He probably doesn’t want to characterize them without a careful reading of every one of them.
And yes, they probably are half or more duplicates of emails they’ve already read.
Huma doesn’t know how her emails got onto the Wiener’s machine? Maybe the dog did it. Or maybe there’s a pixie left over from the McCarthy hearings.
Or maybe they’re a hack. Maybe someone thought it would be a lot more fun planting them in the wiener’s machine than just dribbling them out on WikiLeaks.
for some probably lousy reason i think that would be hilarious.
Carrick,
to belabor the idea that Comey knows what at least some of the emails say:
He’s a lawyer. I see his announcing their discovery without some familiarity with what’s in them about the same as asking a witness a question in court without knowing what the answer will (or can) be. He wouldn’t do that, and I cannot believe he’d raise all this stink without a pretty clear idea of where this is going to go. This is all based on my assumption that he’s very bright and quite competent, and probably not a fool.
J,
That might be. I could imagine that when Comey says this:
He could mean that the investigative team has an ‘unoffical’ or ‘informal’ or ‘not according to procedure’ type of idea and argument as to why these emails might be significant. Maybe when Comey says take appropriate steps to obtain and review them maybe he means ‘formally’, or ‘offically’, or ‘by the book’.
Or not. ~shrug~ I’ve driven myself half mad pondering Comey. There’s just not enough information for me to draw any confident conclusions. I’ve fallen back to taking the guy at his word for now.
Lucia, I wasn’t clear. I don’t dispute the Justice Dept is working with the FBI now. However, they were not working with the FBI before. Instead they were hindering.
So if the NYT story is true, then something has changed in the working relationship between Justice and FBI regarding Hillary. It could be a different investigating team, explosive new evidence like how Janet Reno was compelled to let Ken Starr investigate when he had tapes describing crimes.
j ferguson
Presumably that depends on how much the branch investigating Weiner was permitted to look at. What those limits would be would fall under 4th amendment scholarship that is well beyond me!
Clearly, those who seized the emails saw enough to know emails exist and presumably some of the visible stuff (to/from? Subject) forms a basis to request based on other grounds. “To/From/Subject” are probably enough to indicate they aren’t just wedding and yoga emails. They might not be enough to indicate they aren’t duplicates.
4th amendment stuff for computers.
https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/criminal-ccips/legacy/2015/01/14/ssmanual2009.pdf
It looks like “Chapter 2” is relevant. 🙂
This bit seems to be explaining limitations that might be relevant
It may be the warrant for the Weiner investigation doesn’t extend to reading emails that are obviously Huma’s and not Anthony’s.
The Los Angeles Times reports
Democratic senators demand the FBI release more information on Clinton email probe
In a letter to Comey and Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch on Saturday, four Senate Democrats, including California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking member on the Senate intelligence committee, wrote on that more information must be made public in regard to the new investigation into emails that might be related to Hillary Clinton’s private server.
“The letter is troubling because it is vaguely worded and leaves so many questions unanswered,” wrote the senators, demanding more information by a Monday deadline.Â
http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-updates-democratic-senators-urge-james-comey-to-1477784427-htmlstory.html
______________
I wouldn’t expect a lot by Monday, but all the senators want is “more information.†My guess is Comey anticipated this demand when he sent the letter, and already has something ready, hopefully verifying and adding to what other sources have revealed.
lucia,
Comey’s words, kindly quoted by Mark above, include the possibility that they know what the emails say but because of the rules you quote above cannot do anything with them until they have a legal grasp on them. And I continue to think that they have read enough of them to know that they are worth investigating. It seems possible though that they see naughty things but without the warrant can’t process them to determine if they are just more of the same or discrete.
I suppose it’s just my perversity, but I really like the idea of someone deep in the forest having hacked the main cache of Hillary emails while it was intact, separating out those involving Huma, realizing that her husband, Weiner, spent a lot of time on-line, hacking his system, modifying the meta data on the hacked Hillary emails to make them look like they resided on the Weiner machine and remotely installing them there. I think the only really difficult thing would be to get the email blocks spread all over the disk as they would be had they been written over time, but maybe even that can be done without it being obvious.
Of course they could have gotten there the old fashioned way but then how can we deal with Huma who doesn’t remember using that machine?
j ferguson,
Perhaps, she too, suffered a concussion. 😉
j ferguson,
“….how can we deal with Huma who doesn’t remember using that machine?”
.
There is a great deal of ‘memory loss’ for Hillary and her posse. Odd for people who are claimed to be smart. Some might think working with Hillary provokes selective amnesia. Some might think they are just a bunch of liars.
Meet the Press this morning revealed that Huma had signed a statement that she had turned over all of her emails to the FBI referring to all of her ‘devices’. No wonder she can’t remember this batch.
J,
You know me, I’m not afraid to go there. 🙂
Stuxnet was real. Incredibly sophisticated attacks are clearly possible to actors with the resources. This said, everything has a cost. Things that are possible to actors with immense resources and expertise such as the U.S. government are not necessarily generally possible. The question turns into this for me – is the proposed attack plausible? If it is unnecessarily complicated, Occam’s razor starts to shred it. If we imagine an actor with such resources and motives, is it credible that Weiner’s device was the best method of attack against Hillary’s campaign. In my view, this is where the idea falls apart. I suspect there would have been better, more certain ways of utilizing such nefarious resources in an attack on Hillary’s campaign.
But it’s a fun idea!
mark,
I think you are right. This would have been a very expensive investment which would have depended for its effect on Weiner’s laptop coming into the possession of the Feds timely.
I doubt if that was predictable so…
…Looking back, I realize that your cheek was sort of puffy. I thought you had a Halloween candy in there, but I see now that might have been your tongue…
🙂
lucia:
Yes, I agree. What I think is interesting about the investigation still being “open”, is that Comey mislead the public in his statement. That leads to the reasonable question, if on this aspect of the investigation, what else did he deceive us on?
Also it seems like Comey went far beyond what the FBI normally would say for an open investigation in his first public statement. Some of what he said was prejudicial (and some of those prejudicial statements benefited Clinton obviously).
marc, I was actually serious – well, sort of. I suppose that the practicality of planting emails on a remote machine would involve connection speed. You’d need a window of opportunity to send a couple of hundred meg file containing the emails and then a temporarily resident routine to mix the blocks over the disk in a plausible pattern as well as merge the emails with those already there or replace the original file with the doctored one and then disappear.
Since I can see how this could be done if one had the machine on his desk, I don’t think it’s that much of a reach to do this remotely.
I’m also assuming that something like the method for doing it in Unix-Linux-MacOS which is what I’m familiar with would work in Windows.
My guess is that when Huma had to produce her devices she realized the additional breach of security using a shared laptop, even if Weiner had security clearance, which he probably didn’t. Huma likely decided to cover the tracks by simply deleting the emails. But, as everyone knows, the emails would still be there.
.
There is virtually no chance she forgot 1000+ emails.
J,
In that case, I’d say yup. It could certainly be done. Making a gross but sort of mostly true generalization IMO, Linux is only mostly secure when administrators take security really seriously. I am abysmally ignorant of Mac OS and don’t have an opinion there.
Even more plausibly, the laptop was used once as an intermediary for the migration of the email archive from one device to another. The Clinton aid who hired Platte River to set up the server, John Cooper, testified last month he did the migrations for staff and hammered the old devices, and he was not an IT specialist, just the most handy staffer.
j ferguson,
Ummm… she probably wasn’t talking about all the emails that had been on ‘devices’, but only those which were not already deleted. She simply mis-spoke… she probably meant to say: “I turned over all emails that I didn’t delete.”
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I took the time to look at a few of the Clinton foundation’s tax returns…. funny enough, the donations seemed to be a lot higher when she was secretary of state than after she left…. at least until people were convinced she would run for president. Looks to me like they spend about $50-$60 million a year for salaries, benefits, travel, and “sponsoring” international gatherings to advance their policy agendas. How much is actually distributed to charitable causes seems to depend on how much more than $50 million they receive in donations, and looks to vary between near nothing and a fair fraction of total donations (about 60% distributed or so looks like the maximum). Donors placing restrictions on the use of very large donations may have something to do with this.
lucia, I think you are spot on regarding needing to have a search warrant to read the content of the individual emails.
It’s my understanding that the courts treat email headers (which are sent unencrypted) as information that one should have no expectation of privacy for. The body of an email is typically encrypted when it is transmitted, so there is a reasonable expectation of privacy for the email bodies.
The term I’ve heard for physical emails is “on the envelope” information: Basically anybody who handles an envelope potentially will see and potentially read all writing on the exterior…so no is no reasonable expectation of privacy for “on the envelope” information.
In fact, The Post office routinely logs all physical mails, and shares that information with law enforcement.
I think it is very likely that FBI searched the email headers on Weiner’s computer and determined there were Abedin emails, without asking for a search warrant. I think there’s a very good chance neither Comey doesn’t know at this point what is in the email bodies.
However, investigators should already know sender and recipient email address, dates the emails were sent, as well as subject lines. That could already be enough to indicate that there are potentially new emails.
While you’d likely want to review all of the email bodies, it shouldn’t take more than an afternoon to review the emails to work out which ones are potentially new based on already stored information. That assumes the people doing the review are using computer scripts for the search.
j ferguson:
I’m not sure we can really say FBI knows anything about what is on the emails. I tend to favor Lucia’s explanation that accessing the content of the emails requires a search warrant. As I said above, there’s still quite a bit that can be learned without the search warrant, but it’s unclear to me what Comey knows or doesn’t know.
Also, I never automatically rule out incompetency as an explanation when it comes to federal bureaucrats.
Carrick,
I still think they’ve read some of them, warrant or not. I realize that this is what the Trumpers are saying, but my opinion is my own. What is the sanction for looking at them before having the warrant? Does it cause them to become exclusionary? Clearly they can get a warrant based on the ‘envelope’. Then they will read them officially and initiate whatever action seems appropriate having done so. Obviously they cannot do this before having the warrant.
And I agree that sifting a couple of thousand emails looking for the more interesting ones shouldn’t take more than a day or two. What they can then share with the public seems problematic though assuming that they find evidence that people lied to them during the early part of this investigation.
I also assume that immunity grants don’t forgive lying under the umbrella of immunity.
lucia (Comment #153722)
October 30th, 2016 at 6:36 am
j ferguson,
Huma who doesn’t remember using that machine?
Perhaps, she too, suffered a concussion. 😉
____________
According to Eichenwald’s Newsweek article, Abedin mailed documents from her unclassified State Department e-mail account to her Yahoo e-mail account and an e-mail account linked to her husband’s account(don’t know what kind) so she could print documents at home. Could this explain how every document she intended to print got on her husbands laptop whether she used his laptop or another computer at home to print from ?
If she printed from his laptop she should remember using it. But I’m not sure it would be necessary for her to use it. Couldn’t she use another computer to print from her account that was linked to his account?
MAX_OK,
very good point. If she and her husband shared an aol account, as do SWMBO and I (for some things) then those emails could very well have been on his machine without her direct knowledge – never occurred to her.
it’s as little hard to think that she wouldn’t have given this possiblity some thought when the whole email enchilada blew up.
“whole email enchilada blew up” Now there’s an image co conjure with.
Is it possible / plausible / conceivable that whoever was doing the Weiner investigation told Comey off the record the gist of what he’d come across? Or that the Weiner investigator just told Comey that there was something big in there, and Comey trusted him?
No rhet, real questions. But I just have no idea how this stuff really works and I know I have no idea. Sometimes I feel like it’s reasonable to abstract from personal experience, but not really this time for me IMO.
Carrick (Comment #153737)
October 30th, 2016 at 9:13 am.
“While you’d likely want to review all of the email bodies, it shouldn’t take more than an afternoon to review the emails to work out which ones are potentially new based on already stored information. That assumes the people doing the review are using computer scripts for the search.”
_______
Yes, the FBI should be able to weed out duplicates quickly. The time needed to review the remaining e-mails would depend on the number, but hopefully can be completed in a few days. In addition to identifying which of the remaining e-mails are classified, they can identify any which may have been deleted up the line.
j ferguson: It’s certainly possible that somebody sneaked a look.
But I think the mere revelation that there were copies of Abedin’s emails on a previously undisclosed device (suggesting perjury) is already enough to rouse suspicions that a crime might have occurred and to have triggered Comey’s letter.
Carrick,
I agree that the mere existence of the undisclosed emails would be enough to raise suspicions of perjury on Huma’s part, but then why would he broach it in public?
@jferguson
“those emails could very well have been on his machine without her direct knowledge – never occurred to her.
it’s as little hard to think that she wouldn’t have given this possiblity some thought when the whole email enchilada blew up.”
_______
Yes, it could be she just didn’t know, and if her e-mails accessible on his computer are all duplicates of those covered in the previous investigation, this case may be a nothing burger, as it could mean only that she’s careless, which we already knew.
Her remaining e-mails on the computer, if there are any, could be a problem if these were deleted upstream because it suggests an attempt to hide them. Wether it is a problem would depend on the contents.
I may not know what I’m talking about.
Carrick (Comment #153737): The body of an email is typically encrypted when it is transmitted, so there is a reasonable expectation of privacy for the email bodies.
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To be precise, change that ‘when’ to ‘while’. In other words, the whole stream, everything, could be encrypted during transmission, but e-mails would be stored on disk in clear text. Maybe not in a secure government system, the one they were trying to avoid.
Leddite,
“….but e-mails would be stored on disk in clear text.”
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Sounds right to me. What say you Carrick?
Carrick
Yes. If Comey was intending to mislead then, we’ve certainly got to wonder about him. I just don’t think it makes sense to assume he’s “against” Hillary. I also wouldn’t assume he’s “for” her. I think it’s best to start from the basis of we don’t know one way or the other on that.
All in all, I’d say the effect of is testimony in August helped HIllary. Sure, some of what he said was prejudicial, but it took the possibility of indictment off the table. WRT to whether she’d done anything illegal he could had said it’s not the FBI’s role to decide that and evidence was being forwarded to Justice. That would leave it to Lynch to say whatever she was going to say.
Lucia,
“That would leave it to Lynch to say whatever she was going to say.”
.
Indeed. The FBI does not give immunity from Federal prosecution, AG Lynch did that. The FBI does not decide if prosecution should proceed. I was astounded that Comey did not just say: ‘I have forwarded these findings to AG Lynch; it is up to her to decide if prosecution is warranted.’
Carrick
I would think so. The crime might be “Huma lied about having turned over all devices that housed emails”.
BTW: Orin Kerr wrote about the 4th amendment stuff
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/10/30/was-it-legal-for-the-fbi-to-expand-the-weiner-email-search-to-target-hillary-clintons-emails/?utm_term=.f77caeb86ef7#comments
He also doesn’t have sufficient details to make any firm judgement, but he knows the law.
One of the things I’ve been wondering is whether these emails were on Anthony’s “side” (i.e. account.)
He has some speculations that include writing
But I’m wondering: perhaps the weren’t in “her” account.
Jim and I both have logins to my desktop. My email account is on “my” side; his in his. So someone logged into ‘my’ account wouldn’t see “Jim’s” emails; and someone logged into Jim’s account doesn’t see mine.
I suspect lots of people organize things this way– it’s easier in the long run. But suppose Huma and Anthony thought it was easier to have one “account” since it was Anthony’s lap top? Maybe the FBI found her emails on “his” account. (Ok… yeah. I know everyone is saying, “would the cheatin’ lying hubby share an email account with his wife? Well… maybe. If all his super-secret stuff was on his phone. Or if he thought he was so clever he would never be caught. And so on….)
Ledite & SteveF: By default (typically), the body of emails on your computer is generally stored as clear text. At least that’s been my experience.
But because your computer’s data is password protected (on an account level), you do have an expectation of privacy when it’s stored, though, so pretty sure it would need a search warrant to access.
When I save sensitive data, it is always stored as password-protected documents. That goes for sensitive data sent via emails too.
I’ll note it’s possible to configure your email so that all incoming emails get save in an encrypted format. That’s obviously way over the head of Team Clinton.
j ferguson:
The speculation I’ve seen is it’s an attempt to cover his own butt.
lucia, I agree on this point too—what Comey said didn’t necessarily harm Clinton even if some of it was a bit more sharply focused than need be. Nor do I subscribe to the theory he was trying to harm her.
Since we’re dealing with public opinion, perceptions and appearances do matter though. So it’s not just what his motivations where that actually matters (unless he can document this).
Because he apparently did not follow DOJ guidance, I think he has considerably more exposure here than if he had given a more generic initial statement.
j ferguson,
Out of curiosity, do you know the origin of SWMBO? Hint, it wasn’t Rumpole and, according to Wikipedia, it’s still in print.
Carrick
No. My recent comment has to do with memory of what was being discussed when I posted about Comey’s testimony to Congress. MikeN seemed to me to be suggesting that in interpreting recent stuff we should assume Comey is trying to take down Clinton. So: no, I don’t think so. I don’t think his overall behavior is consistent with that.
Yes: My take is he didn’t follow DOJ guidance earlier on. But that now put him in a Catch 22 wrt to the current situation. Because his previous testimony created a false impression that would influence the election if it persist but meanwhile, saying anything to change the impression also influences the election. Add to that misleading Congress…
The big problem was the earlier testimony.
“Investigators believe it’s likely the newly recovered trove will include emails that were deleted from the Clinton server before the FBI took possession of it as part of that earlier investigation.”
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/30/politics/clinton-emails-fbi-abedin/index.html
Carrick, Ledite, SteveF, can you provide examples of e-mail encryption? My understanding is they are transmitted as plaintext unless you use encryption software.
I don’t know if aol has changed their storage format but if it isn’t encrypted it sure is unreadable – doubtless some sort of compression scheme. I once wanted to migrate an aol email archive to another system and ran into this. I think it was possible to buy software to do this with. I eventually devised another way to do it, but cannot remember that either.
I doubt that anything like this would present a prrolem to the Special Agents – and btw, at the FBI, all agents are ‘special.’
According to this report, the FBI still doesn’t have the e-mails.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/30/politics/clinton-emails-fbi-abedin/index.html
Max OK
Even according to your link, the FBI have the emails. Your link says:
If the FBI criminal investigators didn’t have the emails, they would not have “stumbled on” them.
The question is whether the FBI investigators have gotten permission to read them.
Things are moving fast. According to this, they seem to have been granted their warrant. I based that on the tense used below:
“has had to await” implies they no longer have to wait. If so, they ahve their court order.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/laptop-may-include-thousands-of-emails-linked-to-hillary-clintons-private-server-1477854957/
MikeN: I provided this link a while back. Today it’s generally referred to as “TLS” (transport layer security), but you’ll often see it referred to as “SSL” (secure socket layer) whether it’s SSL or the newer TLS.
Not all emails servers use SSL or TLS, but I wouldn’t personally use a server that didn’t support SSL or TLS.
Google Mail, Yahoo mail, Microsoft Exchange and most other major email services all use SSL/TLS encryption. When you read your email in their web browser, you’ll notice it uses the https protocol. Like with mail, https prevents clear text from being transmitted over the internet.
There are Federal guidelines that are supposed to be followed.
I understand when Clinton’s server first “went live”, her email did not have SSL for the first three months. I’m guessing that was in violation of government policy too.
“has had to await†implies they no longer have to wait.
That’s not clear to me.
If it said ‘had to await’ then they no longer have to wait.
‘has to await’ means they are still waiting.
I think ‘had had’ would give the same as ‘had’ but I don’t think ‘has had’ means it is no longer the case. ‘Lucia has had a blog since…’ without the since is it still ok?
MikeN: can you provide examples of e-mail encryption? My understanding is they are transmitted as plaintext unless you use encryption software.
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The encryption is provided by the https connection (as opposed to an http connection). If your e-mail does not use this I suggest you look into it further.
Mike N
Hmmm… yeah. I think your right.
They article also says “As federal agents prepare to scour roughly 650,000 emails to see…” But now that you clarify that whole tense thingie…. that doesn’t mean they have permission to scour yet.
I guess we wait to see.
Ledite, https would encrypt transmission from your computer to Yahoo. Would it encrypt the e-mails as they are in transit from sender mail to receiver mail, say Gmail?
Mike N… I’m back to wondering about the verb tense…
In the example “Lucia has had a blog”. The “had” is used in the sense of”to have” == “to possess”. It’s not a helper verb. So in “has had a blog”, “has had” is present perfect for “to have”. So… http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/presentperfect.html
But in “has had to wait”, the second “had” is a helper verb. It’s not used to express “having” or “possessing” anything. Beyond that… i”m not going to say more because I’ve been reading grammar pages and “ouch”. (It seems none touch the “has had to blah” constructions. They are clear on
“has done” (present perfect of “to do”).
“had done”.
But not seeing “has had to do” which must be some sort of tense associated with doing not having.
It is interesting that we have to wait until Monday (Tuesday, Wednesday?) for clarification. It is astounding that Comey gave zero guidance: eg, ‘we are asking a judge…, and will know by….’
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But don’t worry, if Huma faces prosecution she will be promptly pardoned in the peoples republic of Clinton shortly after January 2, 2017.
SteveF,
Huma could be pardoned by Obama. 🙂
MikeN and Ledite: The SSL & TLS layers I was referring to earlier are part of “SMTP” (simple mail transport protocol). This relates to how email servers communicate with each other.
HTTPS only deals with the transmission to and from your device to and from a web server, which presumably is acting as a mail reader for your email server. Alternatives include POP3, IMAP and Microsoft Exchanges’s proprietary protocol MAPI. These all relate to how your device reads or retrieves email from your server.
Lucia, good point. I got it from a page about ‘has had an ice cream.’
I also wonder if there is a difference between
‘has had a blog since …’ and ‘Lucia has had a blog.’
‘had had’ would only be used if it was in the past tense.
However, is there really a difference, since infinitives are classified as nouns?
Carrick, if the encryption is at a higher level than the mail server, then the message would still be viewable by any servers en route to the recipient, and this would be unencrypted.
I don’t know how much the tech has changed, but I remember trying to explain to a business that they can’t just have customers e-mail their credit card info.
MikeN,
The grammar thing is bugging me. (And the google searches were weird because the question was often what does “has has to X” mean. And the answers fell in the categotry “has eaten dinner” or “had eaten dinner”. I think the people answering didn’t really grock them problem which I think has to do with the full range of what “has to” can mean.
So I thought about this sort of exchange
Q: “Why did you do it?”
A: “I had to”.
Here “had to” mean “to be required to” or “must”. So “had is not a “helper” verb and it does not mean “possess” “own” or anything like that.
And we use “have to” that way all the time.
So now
“She has to wait”: present tense. Like “she is required to cook”
“She has had to wait” present perfect “she has been required to cook”
“She had to wait.” The “had to” is the past perfect “she had been required to cook”.
Mind you, I need to put “I think” everywhere here because I am confusing myself.
But, if this holds, “have had to wait” means “have been required to wait”. This is present perfect. Which — in many cases– means the activity is done. But it doesn’t preclude the possibility it continues.
Example: “I’ve cooked dinner, honey!” Generally means you better start mosieing on to the table because dinner is cooked. On the other hand, “I’ve cooked all day!” Does that mean they are finished cooking? Not sure.
We need a mr/ms language person here!
Lucia,
“Huma could be pardoned by Obama.”
.
Sure, but I doubt Obama wants to soil his record with that kind of blatantly political pardon. Hillary, OTOH, is so corrupt that such niceties matter not at all. In any case, Huma is not going to prison on Hillary’s account, no matter what she did.
Whatever the conjugation issue:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fbi-obtains-warrant-needed-start-reviewing-emails-found/story?id=43179164&cid=abcn_tco
FBI Obtains Warrant Needed to Start Reviewing Emails Found on Laptop Used by Clinton Aide
Lucia,
Let’s hope the review doesn’t take 10 days.
Actually, if the warrant is already in hand, the analysis should take not more than a day or so….. OK, I am being wildly optimistic.
650,000 emails! Well there goes the “it’s just duplicates” argument. This is the mother load. The laptop must have been used as an grand archive for multiple devices and emails. Huma was the insulator between the Clinton server email population and the marching orders and ground status reports coming in from Clinton Inc. I would bet Huma thought the laptop files were deleted and wouldn’t be found.
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There are three separate investigation needing the laptop data including, the “pay for play” investigation of Clinton Inc., the secure document handling and the Weiner sexting of minors. The FBI needs to break up the emails into 100 item groups (sorted by third party’s addresses) and bring in agents from other law enforcement and intelligence to work in two-person teams to screen and release the non-classified material daily.
.
I know I’m just dreaming we will get anything before the election. But lightning could strike again!
Max_OK, You mentioned that nothing could stop you from voting for Clinton. Harry Reid is now accusing Comey of violating the Hatch Act. This could very well be setting the stage for Comey’s imminent firing and the install of the deputy director, who’s wife got $700K from Terry Mcauliffe.
.
Would you applaud such a move? Or would you see it as a
Saturday Night Massacre?
Violating the Hatch Act???? Oh, puhleeze. That’s pure grandstanding. There are no grounds whatsoever for that accusation. I would say that Comey’s first announcement was closer to a violation of the Hatch Act as it clearly helped the Clinton campaign.
What about Lois Lerner and the other IRS employees involved with delaying applications? Even that might not fall under the Hatch Act.
Comey is a political appointee, right? Obama could fire him on a whim.. right? (Real Q’s. But I think the answers are yes and yes.)
Lucia,
I thought this too (and still rather think it’s true). However, a friend mentioned to me and I confirm on wikipedia:
.
I’m no longer certain he can be casually fired. Looking into this.
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[Update: According to this article, he can be fired.
Apparently a Pres has fired an FBI director before]
I would point out that if Comey wrote the letter on flimsy pretenses Lynch, his boss, or the US attorney for New York would have every right [and I would say obligation] to rebut it. The fact that they haven’t spoken is an indication to me that there is something substantial here.
JD
lucia,
Correct. But it looks like he’s still covered by the Hatch Act like all other FBI employees because he’s not involved in setting policies. But the burden of proof that sending the letter was a political act would be hard to meet.
JD,
Yes. There’s been enough time for Lynch to say something other than “We told him it was against our policy”.
I think it’s widely agreed she told him she considered it against their policies. But she did not order him to not send the letter. And his view is he did not violate policy.
And she’s now doing…. bupkiss about any “policy violation”.
Honestly, I think 650 thousand emails speaks for itself. Even if many turn out to be duplicates and many are “nothing”, this is a lot of stuff to sift. And the public had been given the impression the FBI was not going to be looking at any more emails.
The president can fire the director of the FBI, but presumably only for cause, not on a whim. William Sessions was the only director to be fired: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Sessions#cite_note-7
But the distinction might be nominal. I don’t know what recourse Comey might have if fired on a whim.
MikeN asked for examples; I gave one. It gets complicated really fast, so if you want to know more, just Google it. SMTP was clear text; that’s now an issue, so there are now options for encryption. I wouldn’t bet that they are enabled by default on Joe User’s system. In between hops? Who knows? If you care, use PGP.
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BTW, to enable sending more than plain text, there is a MIME standard which encodes things (not the same as encryption).
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http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/51552/how-insecure-is-pop-imap-smtp
If the Senate is confirming someone to the executive branch, that means the President can fire them at any time for any reason. The whole point of having the confirmation is because it is happening outside the civil service rules and to ensure qualification.
Lucia, OK substitute needed for had.
FBI has needed to await.
Re: Ledite (Comment #153753)
The federal guidelines currently require sensitive but unclassified stuff to be sent via encrypted email. The push is also to have volume encryption for systems in general. I don’t if that is what you are referring to as a “secure government system.â€
Classified stuff obviously can never be transmitted or stored on any unclassified system, email or otherwise, so the presence of such information would be a completely separate issue.