The post on Hillary’s health has over 400 comments, so I am writing a continuation post to minimize the need for infinite scroll while still discussing the campaign. For now: I’m putting on the famously amoral Dick Morris’s hat focusing on giving Hillary advice.
Hillary is evidently back on the campaign today. But it’s still morning in my time zone; so far no news stories. I have some advice for her over the course of the next few weeks:
- Don’t wear blue tinted sunglasses. Don’t discuss the theories about the glasses — just stop wearing them. In fact: avoid wearing any sunglasses as much as possible. If you are attending a gathering where other politicians aren’t wearing them, you probably shouldn’t be either.
- If asked, tell people you still feel tired. If you think the cough might linger a few days, tell people the cough might linger for a few weeks. In fact, carry a cane. If you feel tired, sit down. If Trump says “She can’t stand for an hour.” and you can’t stand for at least two hours, laugh and say, “Yeah. I’m planning to avoid standing a long time”. Then if you can stand for an hour, do so. If some asks you, “Gosh. I didn’t think I’d as well enough for that! I guess I’m recovering faster than expected.”
- Travel in a more ordinary limo not a large van that hypothetically could house medical equipment. That way you won’t need to engage speculation the vehicle is a medi-van.
- Take the illness thing head on: Point out that people do die. Perhaps give examples of famous people who seemed perfectly healthy dying (e.g. Jim Fix.) Remind people that if you die, the VP will take your place. Tell voters you think that’s better than Trump. Admitting you are weakened by an illness that can be cured will make it harder for Trump to benefit from dropping snark bombs about your health.
- After admitting you are ill, then say you don’t want to focus on health. You want to focus on issues and then discuss the issue you want to discuss. Make it a real issue: schools, health care, economy, national security… whatever. Some will disagree with your position, but that’s a better focus for you than either (a) your health or (b) what’s wrong with Trump. (There is plenty wrong with Trump. You don’t need to be focusing on that.
Not sure I have any other advice. But I think the above would be better damage control.
I don’t want either candidate to win. But Clinton needs to realize that many skeptical voters are not going to believe she is well until after she appears to be well while in public. So she should just admit that the pneumonia (which is curable) has taken some wind out of her sails, and milk it.
For those of you who think giving Hillary good advice means I want her to win: No. Both are horrible candidates. I want both to lose.
But it’s still interesting to think about what they need to do to win. My view is even Trump will end up still being “Trump”. He gave evidence of that recently (with odd rather insulting statements about a pastor in Flint.) Hillary at least potentially could do a few things to increase the level of sympathy people have for her. I think right now this race is Hillary’s to lose.
Open Thread: Feel free to rip Trump or Hillary. Or tell us what is good about them, if you can think of anything good about either.
Give back all the bribes collected by the Clinton Foundation.
Lucia, you give very good advice, better than I think either of the candidates are getting. They have supposedly the best people in the country. Why do you think they get such poor advice? Who is getting worse advice and why? What would this say about their chosen advisers and their advice to a presidency?
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Regarding “head on approach,” this is reminiscent to the famous 1952 Nixon “Checkers speech”. Attacked for accepting gifts (bribes,) VP Nixon claimed the only gift he received was a little dog his 6-year-old daughter, Tricia, named Checkers. “And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog and I just want to say this right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we’re gonna keep it.” Brings tears even now.
Bruce,
Even assuming lots bribes have been collected (something HRC would deny), giving back the bribes would not help her get elected. It wouldn’t cause a single person to change a vote in her favor. WRT to the bribes:
1) People who don’t disapprove of the bribes even if they occurred. They’ll vote for her even if she took bribes and keeps them.
2) People who care about the bribes but don’t believe there were any bribes. They are more likely to vote against her if the bribes are proven.
3) People who care about the bribes and already believe she took them. Most of them aren’t voting for her. Returning the money probably won’t make them change their votes for her.
4) Assuming bribes occurred, people who gave bribes. They will tend to work against her if they think shes gone back on being bribed. Plus, they’ll be pissed that they stand accused or revealed of bribing by the fact of having their money returned.
Returning bribes can only work if there were very few bribes or relatively small magnitude and the payment can be cast as a “mistake”. There is a limit to how many mistakes anyone can claim before the claims can’t pass the laugh test.
So I really don’t see how returning any bribes would help. Returning lots of money while claiming it was not a bribe but just a mistake can’t work either. Returning any just keeps the story alive.
So: no, that’s not a good campaign move.
Stop telling lies of any kind, even little white lies…. Don’t say anything a fact check will show is false.
Ron Graf,
It’s entirely possible the get some good advice but don’t follow it. If we take the pneumonia story at face value, Clinton was advised to rest, but did not so so.
It is also possible they don’t get good advice because they fire people who give good advice. Some poor choices are not forseeable. For example: It’s entirely possible the blue sunglasses were a fashion choice selected to complement the blue pants-suit Hillary was wearing. In fact, that was my assumption when I saw them. They are sufficiently striking that I did notice them before I read the whole “anti-seizure” rumors. And the fact is: many people pick outfits because they think they look nice, and funky sunglasses fall into the category of the sort of thing one picks on that basis.
That said: people are now identifying the color of the glasses as being “anti-seizure”. The best way to deal with that is to say nothing and just change to more normal sunglasses. The best way to deal with the notion they are to hide super-mondo eyebags is to take them off and get photographed without wearing sunglasses. Of course, that doesn’t mean don’t wear the sunglasses when you are at the beach– that can be painful. But right now for purposes of campaigning, she should try to wear them as little as possible. She should certainly not wear the blue ones unless the rumors are true.
What’s good about them.
1. Hillary’s an experienced politician. I think she understands how our government works, day to day / from the inside better than most. It might make her a more effective President than Trump.
A. Some (myself for example) hold that Hillary is untrustworthy. Trust is a slippery term. Trust to do what? To publicly tell the truth? Heck no, I don’t trust her to do that. To run the country well? I might trust her to do that. Will she line her pockets and her people’s pockets in the process? Maybe, but I’m not sure how much I care about that.
2. Trump’s a billionaire, and I think that ought to count for something. He knows something about how to accomplish things that relatively few other people accomplish.
A. I think Trump might kick over a lot of government apple-carts, and I think that could be a good thing. I wonder if our bureaucrats aren’t getting a little too [cozy] with each other. IRS scandal and no heads really roll. Veterans admin scandal and still no heads roll. Benghazi and no heads roll. Dept of State declines FBI requests to investigate Clinton Foundation. [Excuse me, Dept of Justice] So on. A little bloodletting and carnage amongst the ruling political bureaucrats might be a healthy thing.
I could go on, but let’s just start with that!
What do you think.
While not caring too much for either Trump or Clinton, for me Clinton is by far the worse. She has a track record of corrupt practices going back to the Watergate committee. She lies when the truth would help her. She brags about the double standard she utilizes. She was given high office, and made things much worse, and did so corruptly. Her latest gambit, that all of her health issues over the last several months are about the pneumonia she is said to have recently caught, is so bad that it may end in a spectacular tragic manner for her.
There is a woman here in Houston who lost a close family member to a crime committed by an illegal alien. She started a group called The Remembrance Project http://www.theremembranceproject.org/
to commemorate those who died by similar means. I would occasionally run into her at events around Houston- very low key, very humble. Very non-stereotypical since she is Hispanic. Trump found out about her group and in a low key (by Trump standards) way is coming to Houston this Saturday to give a keynote address at the TRP luncheon. I am going to attend and hear Trump unfiltered. It may be very interesting. Another way of looking at the Trump candidacy is that he is forging a new political coalition that is cutting across a *lot* of stereotypes. Finding out will be fascinating.
Does sound like Dick Morris advice.
Dick Morris advises to attack the opponent on his weak point, while Karl Rove goes after the strength(Swift Boat vets). Morris was the one who polled where to go on vacation.
MikeN,
Also, Dick Morris is careful to distinguish “good politics” from “good ethics”. Sometimes the two line up. Sometimes they stand in opposition to each other. Often the two have nothing to do with each other.
As examples:
* I think the “blue sunglasses” is entirely unrealted to “ethics”.
* Bruce’s advice about bribes springs from his perception about ethics and his belief she did take bribes. If true, then returning the bribes might be good for her soul, but it would be bad for the reputation. It would not help her win votes.
* If she is ill, admitting it is both honest– and so ethical– and good politics. The main harm of her non-fainting in public, long silence, appearing in a public photo-event extolling how fine she felt followed by finally admitting the pneumonia makes lots of people wonder if even the final story is true. So in this case, truth and openness about potential weaknesses when people ask– and they have been– would be both ethical and good politics.
She does seem to have bagged the sunglasses:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-idUSKCN11L1JS
Lucia,
Someone should tell Hillary how to dress; even if she were not running for president, that would still be a horrible outfit.
Bruce,
Hillary is too crafty to take explicit bribes. Is $250K for a 40 minute speech at a Wall Street bank a bribe? By law, no, though most people recognize that the bankers are buying influence. Remember that she made about $10 million this way in a single year. Same thing for Bill’s multitude of overseas speeches at up to $333K a pop, totaling tens of millions of dollars…. while Hillary was Secretary of State. Were those payments bribes? By law, no. After all, the State Department ‘approved’ them all, though most people recognize that the people paying Bill were buying influence. So there is no way the Clintons would ever return those ‘bribes’.
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The Clintons’ endless pursuit of enormous personal wealth via ethically dubious behavior is difficult for me to understand; it is not like an extra $30 million is going to let them eat any better, buy nicer clothes, or travel to even more exotic locations. I find it more than a little creepy.
Steve, it looks weird, but it does give her her own unique style.
If too many are associating it with Mao and Kim Jongs, then get rid of it.
MikeN,
The fabric color choices will probably mean few people will associate the outfit with Mao or Kim Jongs.
I gave up trying to decide which candidate was worse, so I asked myself if either would do anything good. Since I am not a progressive, I could not come up with anything for Clinton. But I came up with several things for Trump. Some won’t appeal to non-conservatives, but some might.
Trump will shake up the elites. They need it.
We should be reluctant to intervene overseas. We should never do so unless it is in our national interest. We should never do so without a clear, achievable objective. If we do intervene, we should act decisively. Trump might actually adopt this policy.
Our overseas friends should be willing and able to stand on their own feet. If we come to their aide militarily, it should be our own choice, made for our own reasons, at a time of our own choosing. To the horror of the foreign policy establishment, Trump might actually move in that direction.
Trump might do something about our short and long term budget problems. But I am not counting on this one.
Trump might actually be able to bully China and other bad actors into better behavior re trade. But I think there is more downside than upside here.
Trump is non-ideological and does not give a fig for the party establishments. That could open the door to some creative compromises. He seems to be trending in that direction, for example with his proposal for paid maternity leave.
The latest iteration of Trump’s immigration policy is mostly reasonable.
Trump will appoint Supreme Court justices who respect the Constitution.
I don’t believe that “Pneumonia” is the “Truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”….It, like everything she does, was a misdirection for political cover……..It may be partly true, but only partly………
I would say ‘might’ rather than will. For one thing, you can never tell how a justice will rule once he gets on the bench. There have been unpleasant surprises in the past, never in a conservative direction either. Also, the left will attempt to crucify any appointee who actually looks solidly conservative. See Bork and Thomas as examples.
His trade policies scare me almost as bad as Clinton’s. He’d probably sign a new version of Smoot-Hawley.
We are signatories to treaties that have been approved by the Senate and have the force of law. Ignoring them would make him no better than Obama and continue to alienate our friends and prop up our enemies. He can’t legally pull out of NAFTA by executive order, for example.
Unless he’s willing to actually use force, his ‘bullying’ will be ignored.
DeWitt wrote: “you can never tell how a justice will rule once he gets on the bench. There have been unpleasant surprises in the past, never in a conservative direction either. Also, the left will attempt to crucify any appointee who actually looks solidly conservative. See Bork and Thomas as examples.”
Yet all four justices appointed by Democrat presidents are reliably liberal. I think that is because they were confirmed by Democrat controlled Senates. The unpleasant surprises have generally been nominees that a Republican president had to get through a Democrat Senate. As you say, the Democrats have been shameless in trying to block candidates they don’t like. If the Republicans keep control of the Senate, conservative nominees should get confirmed.
I don’t think Trump has said he would raise tariffs; I think his position is that he would threaten to raise tariffs to force China to stop manipulating their currency.
Lucia,
I think you are assuming that this election can be like any other i.e., driven by facts. Trump has changed that – he defeated a fairly deep primary pool to win, and not with facts, but by appealing to people’s fears. Momentum is on his side, with Kellyanne Conway he seems to be running a better campaign, so I’m placing him as the favorite.
While this election is not so much about issues, and while I don’t know how much of an effect the debates will have, Hillary has to not only show that she is better informed but also why being informed matters. For Trump the bar is lower.
Looking healthy in the debates and being in the public eye on a daily basis may help too. Your #4 won’t help, I think – a picture in people’s mind of Hillary dying is not likely to make them vote for her. She has to create positive imagery.
RB,
I don’t think that elections have ever been driven by facts. They only pretend to be. Trump has dispensed with the pretense. But maybe Scott Adams has been getting to me: http://blog.dilbert.com/
In this poll his support among blacks has edged up recently – so just showing up seems to bring him benefits.
MIke M,
It seems that issues could have an effect on swing votes, but it’s possible that it is rationalization after the fact.
Since Ohio is an important state in the election, for its worth, I will give my take. Clinton’s elitism and condescension are unpopular in Ohio. Unless Trump makes a major gaffe, I expect him to win Ohio. Recent polls show him leading in Ohio. See http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/09/15/trump-ohio-poll/90409146/ Also, a major construction union refused to endorse the Democratic candidate for the Senate, Strickland. http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/senate-races/296199-major-union-opts-out-of-endorsing-in-critical-ohio-senate-race
… Also, I would add that Clinton has been a very poor campaigner historically, and she is handicapped, in my view, by her inability to do anything to Trump in Ohio unless he stumbles. In 08 Clinton lost ground fast to Obama in the primaries because of her poor ability as a campaigner. The more she campaigns in Ohio, the worse it will get in my view.
JD
Perhaps Hillary could try making this a message about recovery e.g. she is fighting and recovering, she will do the same for Americans who have been hit economically and are trying to recover.
RB Re: Black voters. If the poll you cited is accurate and Trump is getting 19% of the Black voters, he will almost certainly win. I am skeptical about that percentage, but 19% is a huge bump from the 5% or so Black support that I saw previously. It certainly explains why he is ahead in that poll.
JD
Lucia: Thanks for the new thread. Don’t know how you put up with this over time. I wouldn’t have the patience over a long time frame.
JD
JD: that poll is a new poll, has consistently been an outlier supportive for Trump, is different in many ways (online only, thus capturing the ‘shy Trump voter’ effect plus other significant differences discussed in articles) but probably at least captures trends. The previous bump occurred after the “What the hell do you have to lose?” speech. Just paying attention seems to give him extra votes here.
RB: “he previous bump occurred after the “What the hell do you have to lose?†speech. Just paying attention seems to give him extra votes here.”
….I pretty much agree with that. In this instance, Trump is pretty much right. 8 years of Obama has done virtually nothing for Black citizens.
JD
Yeah. You got a lot of comments in your in box!! One thing: I don’t read them all real time. Heck… I don’t read them all. I do scan for behavior fro time to time.
RB:
.
I think your cynicism is unjustified. All elections in a free society are about leadership and political issues. The latter are usually defined by the party. Swing voters are influenced by the leadership issue if the political issues are a wash.
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Some leadership issues:
1) Who will be the most inspiring leader for the country and world?
2) Who will deter aggression rather than inflaming or inviting it by managing the balance of strength in posture while also maintaining an image of charity, compassion and even-handedness.
3) Where will the bar be set for ideals of lawfulness, integrity, transparency and justice?
4) Who will have the ability to productively negotiate with congress and foreign leaders?
5) Who will show drive and discipline yet show restraint, decisiveness and persistence with humility, in the presence of the most corruptible environment, the trappings of presidential power?
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For me personally leadership is a close second to the reversal of the tendency of promises to special interests at the expense of the common good. The Republican governors have shown decisively that simple polices of restrained regulation and government spending breeds economic prosperity. I am a fiscal conservative and social liberal. I think Trump is too. Hillary is likely more ideologically liberal than Bill was, who would compromise with conservatives. Hillary would be like Obama in all ways except golf.
Ron Graf,
You told yourself that Trump is a fiscal conservative, but there isn’t any concrete evidence for what he believes in, except for his statement that he will eliminate inefficiencies, he will replace Obamacare with something great, his shifting views on interest rates etc.
Mike M.,
The US accusing China of manipulating their currency is classic tu quoque, or as the cliche goes, the pot calling the kettle black. The FED’s job, like any other central bank, is to manipulate the value of the national currency. They don’t always do a good job of it, but it’s their job. Or do you think that quantitative easing and near zero interest rates doesn’t constitute currency manipulation (real question)? China tied the value of their currency to the USD for quite a while and were accused of manipulation for doing that. That’s not manipulation in my book.
DeWitt,
You wrote: “Or do you think that quantitative easing and near zero interest rates doesn’t constitute currency manipulation (real question)? ”
Correct. “Currency manipulation”, at least in this context, refers to the manipulation of exchange rates, not the adjusting of the money supply for internal economic purposes.
“China tied the value of their currency to the USD for quite a while and were accused of manipulation for doing that. That’s not manipulation in my book.”
That is pretty much the definition of manipulation, at least if they were keeping their currency artificially low, as they were accused of doing.
With free exchange of currency, a trade imbalance is supposed to produce a change in relative currency value that then reduces the imbalance. China is accused of not letting that process occur.
I think a 19% black vote would have flipped the election from Obama to Romney, at least if you don’t account for the turnout operations.
Trump sees the black vote as a weakness, and he set about to change this. He didn’t go to NAACP, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, or other liberals. He asked for votes and discussed subjects he thought would matter. Then he keeps repeating it, even to white audiences that aren’t particularly interested.
The blatantness of it is shocking. No political consultant would have encouraged it, just like they wouldn’t have encouraged the foolish strategy during the primary of going to every state that had an election and campaigning there.
Mike M.
It’s impossible for a country to adjust its money supply without affecting the exchange rate the currency. That’s one of the reasons the FED didn’t raise interest rates when they should have. The whole idea of trade imbalances being good or bad and that exchange rates will adjust to eliminate them if allowed to float freely is fundamentally flawed. It’s a leftover from Mercantilism.
So the whole Eurozone is manipulating currency because they all use the same currency? I think not. Nor do we worry about imbalances of trade between individual states in the US.
DeWitt, regarding not enough gold, it is not necessary for Treasury to buy and sell gold to keep the price stable. You could have the Fed buy and sell bonds to change the money supply.
Stupid commentary from the NYTs.
….See http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/09/15/what-do-we-need-to-know-about-candidates-health/releasing-candidates-health-records-is-campaign-spin-and-distortion
…The author, a professor at the University of Alabama states:
…” Questions about Clinton’s health are really questions about how well a woman fits into a masculine image of the presidency, and less about Clinton’s physical stamina. A letter from Clinton’s doctor is not going to determine whether she can fit this masculine image.”…
She is so stupid that in her commentary she refers to Roosevelt’s wheelchair as not disabling him [as though it was related to his death] when Roosevelt’s life-threatening problems were high blood pressure and congestive heart failure. This is another example of the dummy left at work in Universities.
JD
DeWitt,
You wrote: “It’s impossible for a country to adjust its money supply without affecting the exchange rate the currency.”
Of course not. But it is a minor effect. I used to live in Canada. The exchange rate between the U.S. and Canadian dollars varies enormously. But that has very little to do with what the Bank of Canada does.
You wrote: “The whole idea of trade imbalances being good or bad and that exchange rates will adjust to eliminate them if allowed to float freely is fundamentally flawed. It’s a leftover from Mercantilism.”
That is a widely held view. Until recently I shared it, but now I have my doubts. Your view is based on idealized models that I suspect break down when capital, but not labor, can flow freely across borders. Also, labor often can not flow freely between jobs within a country, contrary to what the models seem to assume.
“So the whole Eurozone is manipulating currency because they all use the same currency? I think not. Nor do we worry about imbalances of trade between individual states in the US.”
But those are cases where all the states are playing by essentially the same rules, with extensive sharing of resources, and with a relatively free flow of labor. Nothing like the U.S. and China.
I think the end point of your logic is open borders. That will destroy our societies for the sake of money. Supporters of Brexit, Trump, etc. are catching on to that.
MikeN wrote: “Trump sees the black vote as a weakness, and he set about to change this. He didn’t go to NAACP … No political consultant would have encouraged it, just like they wouldn’t have encouraged the foolish strategy …”
That is a big part of why I think there is a chance that President Trump could turn out to be a good thing. He sees a problem and is willing to go outside the box to find a solution, even when the “experts” and special interests don’t approve.
Lucia,
Can the author of a post opt out of automatically receiving an email for each comment? I have found it disruptive to receive a constant stream of messages after a post, especially during the day when there are lots of business related messages to read.
There is a very long list of Trump coming up with creative ways to win.
Mike M.
Wrt the US/Canadian monetary exchange rate: Canadian monetary policy would be the tail trying to wag the dog. The US dollar is the world’s reserve currency. As such, the Fed exercises enormous power over global exchange rates. Therefore, it’s perfectly reasonable for the Chinese to peg their currency to the dollar. That way, they don’t allow the Fed to manipulate their currency. That is the true nature of the complaint, not that the Chinese are engaging in currency manipulation themselves.
The Chinese do engage in economic practices that are questionable at best. They are still communists after all. Their cornering of the supply of rare earth elements is a prime example. I think that particular move is starting to bite them in the a$$, though.
SteveF,
I don’t know. I can look into that.
I’ve just learned to only look periodically. Obviously, the author can write a rule for their spam filter.
Lucia,
“Obviously, the author can write a rule for their spam filter.”
.
You’re right; I hadn’t thought of that.
MikeN,
Umm, that’s what the Fed does now. The Fed has dumped mass quantities of money into the system starting in 2008. The price of gold went up, then down and now it’s back up a bit.
http://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-prices-100-year-chart
The price of gold has a large emotional content. Unless you’re willing to buy and sell mass quantities of gold, monetary policy alone won’t be able to keep the price of gold constant. What really needs to be done is to repeal Humphrey-Hawkins so that the Fed is not torn between the Scylla and Charybdis of trying to maintain the value of the dollar and achieve full employment at the same time.
Yes, a gold standard would force the government into maintaining the value of the dollar.
You say it wouldn’t work, but then you acknowledge that Fed actions have changed the price of gold. They are not currently targeting a stable dollar.
It’s almost inconceivable that a racist, misogynist, xenophobic neophyte politician like Donald Trump could ever defeat a seasoned professional politician like Hillary Clinton — who, for all the faults she has, the same faults that most all professional politicians have — has been in the public eye for more than three decades.
Trump is totally unfit to become President of the United States. Before the 2016 election cycle is over, a clear majority of America’s voters will come to fully understand and appreciate just how bad a president he would be.
All Hillary Clinton has to do to gain an easy victory over Donald Trump is to carefully guard her reserves of stamina and energy; to keep up with the task of explaining and defending her policy positions at every opportunity; to keep exposing Donald Trump’s basic character flaws for what they are — racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic — and to let The Gaffinator himself demonstrate day by day, week by week, just how terrible a choice he is for becoming the leader of a large multi-cultural democracy.
MikeN,
You missed the point completely. I’m saying that the recent Fed actions had little or no influence on the recent price of gold. It’s gone both up and down while Fed policy has been continuously expansive.
Beta Blocker,
It was also inconceivable that Trump would win the Republican nomination until it happened. Reagan wasn’t supposed to defeat Carter in 1980, much less win by a landslide. There’s no limit to Hillary’s ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. She was supposed to win the 2008 nomination in a walk over an unknown like Obama.
The DNC emails, btw, show quite clearly that the elite in the party rigged the 2016 nomination process to nominate Clinton, not that anybody particularly liked her. There was no hope of an actual contest.
The leak of Colin Powell’s emails is going to make it difficult for him to make a surprise, enthusiastic endorsement of Hillary in October.
DeWitt
Yes. This is true. And yet, it is so odd. No one in particular liked her. She is a terrible campaigner and so was likely to be a weak candidate. Yet she is the one the liberal elite latched onto.
Given the email in which he says he’d rather not vote for her, an endorsement from him won’t count for much. The “dicking bimbos” was funny too. 🙂
Beta, DeWitt,
Trump has certainly defied the odds so far. Seven weeks before the election polls show he and Sec. Clinton tied. And indeed, I was one of those who blithely assumed he had no chance of winning the Republican nomination in the first place.
I think the game will be decided in the debates. Till then, IMO anybody espousing certainty regarding the outcome is kidding themselves.
Lucia wrote: “No one in particular liked her. She is a terrible campaigner and so was likely to be a weak candidate. Yet she is the one the liberal elite latched onto.”
I think that could be exhibit A as to just how clueless the liberal elite have become. The Republican elite are just as bad. On both sides, they no longer seems to share values and goals with the general populace, show contempt for a large part of the people, and, over at least the last two administrations, have proven inept at managing both foreign and domestic affairs. Result: Trump.
Many of the NeverTrump crowd seem to think that if Clinton wins, the elites will fix themselves in response to the Trump scare. Not a chance.
Off-topic, but Tesla accused someone of email impersonation, attempting to obtain confidential corporate information. It sounds familiar somehow…
mark bofill: Imagine you are voting before the first debate and make a note of who you would vote for. Then, check whether you changed your mind after the debate.
RB,
Will do. However, I’m honestly not sure yet who I’m going to vote for. Seriously.
Trump needs to have Reagan’s debate line on standby for when Clinton tries to bait him: “There you go again.”
As a denier (and a proud new, freshly minted deplorable) however, I’d like to note that I’ve heard the racist, misogynist, xenophobic spiel so many times and for (in my view) such poor cause that if anything, hearing somebody so labeled by a progressive actually raises that person’s standing by default in my eyes. I doubt Trump is any more those things than I’m a believer in a Flat Earth. All it really says to me anymore is that the person being labeled really pisses off progressives, and that’s OK or better than OK in my book.
.
Funny how that works.
mark bofill (#150675) –
I agree. The level of public debate in this country is almost entirely argument by insult or by association. Perhaps it was ever thus, and only made more visible by more “efficient” messaging. But the political ads contend that any vote which coincides with the interests of (banks/oil companies/pharmaceutical companies/off-shorers/etc.) is equivalent to being beholden to those interests. Or any increase in taxation is equivalent to being a “tax-and-spend” politician. Caricatures, in other words. There’s no nuance, nothing to make one think. It’s all about trying to associate negative imagery with the opponent.
Was it always this way? (real question)
P.S. Oh, and all the “not sponsored by any candidate” leaflets/spots. Republican X is running against Democrat Y, and some allegedly unaffiliated group spontaneously arises and sends out anti-X (or anti-Y) literature. Such a transparent way of working around campaign finance rules. [Not that I’m a big fan of those rules, anyway.]
/rant
HaroldW,
Thanks for your response.
Is an excellent question I have often wondered about. I think the …character? of the American people has changed over time since the country’s founding. But is this the way public debate and / or politics have always worked?
Honestly don’t know.
Harold,
But I agree with you, and it has gotten to the point where I feel that I know almost nothing about the real differences between the candidates precisely because I disregard so much of what I hear about them. Even from their own mouths, frankly; setting aside the insults, I still don’t really believe much of anything they say. I assume they are running a circus to attract their prospective suckers (sorry, constituents, wrong word) and fire up their base, and possibly manipulate independents.
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Further (and I could be totally wrong about this) I suspect that if I were to take a quiz where I was asked to identify what Presidents in recent years had supported what policies or legislation, (excepting the policies and laws that get extensive media coverage) I’d fail miserably. I suspect (but could certainly be wrong) there’s not as much difference between Presidencies in general as we’d like to believe. I’ll admit I don’t have any evidence supporting this, it’s just a suspicion.
Hillary: “I will launch a $60 billion Clean Energy Challenge to partner with those states, cities, and rural communities across the country that are ready to take the lead on clean energy and energy efficiency, giving them the flexibility, tools and resources they need to succeed.”
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/some-policy-answers-on-climate-from-the-presidential-candidates/
I’m feeling real good about Hillary grounding all this in the laws of physics, robust tree-ring proxy estimates, and the debate is over, problem-free climate model projections. 😉
Andrew
Speaking, again, of the DNC emails, Kimberly Strassel’s Potomac Watch column, Democrats’ Deplorable Emails, (paywalled) in today’s WSJ goes into more detail:
I don’t buy into the myth that Clinton was elected due to corruption within the DNC.
She had a four year running start on Bernie, and by the time he had his organization in place (in March) the race was unwinnable. This is due to the way most states in the Democratic primaries divvy out the delegate votes—normally it’s based on something approximating the percentage of popular vote, and Clinton consistently won the plurality of votes in the big states due to her in-place ground game.
Ironically, had it not been for the super delegates that Bernie liked to attack (which continued to him a theoretical chance of winning till the very end), the race would have been over much sooner.
Even the idea of the DNC having a preferential candidate—that’s business as usual in DC, even within the RNC. What made this election different, was there was no favorite candidate within the Republican party. These are political contests, not some kind of neutral sport.
The idea that one candidate gets the majority of Democrats behind him or her isn’t proof of corruption, it’s how its supposed to work for good politicians. The primaries are meant to pick “the best” candidate for a party.
[Obviously it failed this year for both parties. People I know who work for the RNC are grinding their teeth on the certainty that any other Republican candidate would be way ahead of Clinton at this point.]
Carrick, small victories in big states don’t help Hillary as much. Where Hillary really put Bernie away was in the South getting big margins, sometimes 80-20. She also kept it somewhat close in caucus states in the West. Had she bothered to organize these in 2008, she likely beats Obama or at least makes things very interesting after winning nearly every big state.
Carrick,
Basically I agree with you. Two things:
1. I remember being surprised reading about it, wondering to myself, That’s corruption? I thought that was the way it always worked… hmm.
2. Accepting for argument’s sake that there was something corrupt going on, if so I think it was unnecessary. Hillary was going to win anyway. At what point did it look like Bernie had a realistic chance, given the delegate count along the way? (rhetorical, I didn’t think Bernie ever looked like he had much chance) But I wasn’t paying close attention, and in the spirit of my observation in prior comments nothing is certain except death and taxes.
Anyways.
No Johnson or Stein at the debates (not really a surprise).
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/johnson-stein-fail-first-presidential-debate-228301
Mark Bofill:
That’s sad as, as much as some people may not want to admit it, there are serious issues with racism, sexism and xenophobia in this country. Right now, what we have is real problems that some people don’t want to deal with so they ignore/dismiss them. In resposne to being unfairly ignored, the people pointing them out feel mistreated/abused. This leads them to act out as they perceive behaving reasonably won’t work. Because they act out, the people who wanted to ignore/dismiss the problems then perceive that as proof their complaints aren’t correct.
Then you’re a fool. Either because you choose to ignore Trump’s repeated statements which endorse bigoted and xenophobic positions or because you believe in a Flat Earth. I’m not sure which. Either way, you can’t use the, “Progressive just don’t like him” excuse to justify ignoring a person’s repeated public statements expressing bigotry and xenophabia.
Carrick:
This seems like it shold be a, “No duh” thing. Of course the political machines will have favored candidates. A large part of a successful campaign is convincing your party’s infrastructure to favor you (or finding a way to overcome that deficit). The idea the DNC favoring Clinton should surprise anyone is a joke. Of course it favored her. She was the only candidate they had that was electable if anyone other than Trump won the republican nomination.
🙂 Thanks Brandon.
Mark Bofill:
I won’t claim to know this to be true, but my personal belief is Bernie Sanders never intended to become president. I think even Sanders planned on Clinton being the democratic nominee.* I think the reason Sanders ran was just to influence the democratic platform. Because Sanders ran, some issues got focus that wouldn’t have otherwise and Clinton had to shift her position on a number of issues. The more successful Sanders was, the more Clinton would have to account for the views and desires of his constituents when running in the presidential election.
This is actually a common thing in politics. It’s a large part of what third parties and minor candidates do. They try to get enough attention and support from voters to influence the parties and candidates which will actually win.
*Mind you, I’m not saying Sanders held no hope of winning. I think he just recognized his chances were low and suspect he’d always have to endorse Clinton in the end.
Brandon,
I agree with you there. I also think this sort of thinking is what got Trump involved in the first place.
How mythical is this?
Maybe they didn’t need to actually do it in the end, but despicable plans were clearly being discussed.
DeWitt,
Sure it was slimy. I just figured it was par for the course.
The religious views of candidates has been a common topic in presidential elections. I don’t see anything particularly noteworthy about trying to bring a person’s religious views into the public debate. It’s a distasteful tactic, but it’s one you could expect in practically any election.
mark,
For us cynics, it’s par for the course. But I’m not so sure about the general population, particularly independent voters. IIRC, the DNC leadership denied at the time that anything like this was going on and that no attempt was being made or thought given to stacking the deck.
Plus, I can barely imagine the media outcry if those were RNC emails discussing campaign strategy in the event that Sanders were the nominee.
Hilarious Headline on CNN:
“Trump Welcomes Deplorables”
JD
DeWitt,
You may have a point there. Certainly a goodly number of people carried on about it no end. I was uncharitable enough to think, ‘Aww, how cute! You thought your party played fair with its own!’
-snort-
Say, I have a general question I’d genuinely like opinions on. Was Bill Clinton’s second term good for the country, in your opinion?
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See, it’s pertinent to me. I have an idea (right or wrong) that what the Clinton’s really care about is power. Oh, I know they have their ideology. Many people do. But my impression is that when Bill got his ‘shellacking’ he moved to center and did a reasonable job in office.
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Unfortunately, I was a younger man at the time, in my late 20’s, and I simply wasn’t paying the sort of attention to politics that I pay these days. It’s not unlikely that my idea that things were going well, or that Bill Clinton was governing well, might simply be wrong.
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But if I’m not wrong, if this is so, and if Sec. Hillary Clinton is as pragmatic as her husband, I imagine that maybe she won’t be a total disaster. It’s the ideologues like President Obama (IMO) who love their lefty (or righty, for that matter) vision for America more than they love power for the sake of power that give me headaches; they don’t seem to learn from experience. Or rather they do learn, but they don’t appear to learn to govern well, because governing well is incompatible with what’s really important to them.
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I don’t know. I’d welcome other people’s recollections and insight regarding this.
Campaign
Trump: The song of angry men followed by welcoming ‘The Deplorables’. http://www.itv.com/news/2016-09-17/donald-trump-les-miserables-do-you-hear-the-people-sing-miami-rally/
HRC: I feel good as closing. Song sung by James Brown. Who died of pneumonia. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/news/hillary-clinton-laughs-off-pneumonia-health-scare-with-i-feel-go/
marc bofill
That’s a pretty big if.
That it is Lucia. I periodically try to remind myself that I have no particular reason to suppose Bill would be a good predictor of Hillary. But I slip sometimes. 🙂
~shrug~
Hillary’s nonpragmatism doomed health care. At the time it looked like something would pass. They were at 55 Senate seats, with lots of liberal Republicans willing to make deals. After Republicans took over Congress, smaller portions passed like CHIP and portability.
Clinton also agreed to a capital gains tax cut that brought in more revenues and eventually balanced the budget unexpectedly.
JD Ohio,
On “Welcoming the Deplorables”, I’m thinking it might be a very shrewd move on Trump’s part. He (or his team) may be figuring that people who feel they have been labeled “deplorable” by Clinton will find it very, very, very difficult to vote for her.
Unfortunately for Clinton, the number of people who feel she labeled them “deplorable” may not only be well over 1/2 Trumps supporters, but even many undecided. (This is in fact hardly surprising because the statement was initially designed to appeal to HRC’s feeling rather than thinking side.)
As lots of the reaction to “deplorables” will be emotional and not thinking, it will be hard for Clinton to overcome the sort of reaction I suspect might happen. It might be different the majority of voters already had decided for Hilary– in that case, they would never feel she’d called them deplorable. But …. well… it’s not the case.
The fact that someone made the connection to a rousing song from a popular musical featuring heros who are on the “outside” of the dominant political class– that’s better than gravy. It’s Hollandaise! Trump doesn’t need to do any “explaining” and he can keep the whole thing at the feeling level.
Clinton’s people need to figure out how to address this. But really, I don’t know how it can be done. It can’t be done head on.
Mark, Bill Clinton had a good economy for his second term. There was no inflation, and if anything deflation as gold dropped from 350 to about 250. Welfare reform had passed during his reelection campaign, and Congress was controlled by Republicans who were keeping budgets somewhat under control, though spending increased more than when Democrats were in charge.
The issue is the amount of executive power being waged now, rendering Congress almost irrelevant.
Lucia: Deplorables
….Trump is playing this gaffe perfectly. In one word, it encapsulates the condescension, hate and ignorance of the Left. If you listen to her speech where she used the term, she got a large amount of applause for it from the audience — showing her supporters are coming from the same hateful place.
….Clinton couldn’t have taken a gun to her head and shot it and done more damage to her campaign. I am sure Mark Cuban, who has been very critical of the effectiveness of her campaign, is going crazy because he knows how effective it is. Will be interesting to see the vicious criticism she will receive from the Left if her numbers keep on going down. Of course, Trump can still screw it up.
JD
Mark Bofill, the answer I’d give depends on what, specifically, you’re asking. I think things were fairly good for the country overall during that time, but I think that’s in many ways despite Bill Clinton rather than because of him. I also think he laid the groundwork for a number of problems whose effect didn’t manifest until after he left office.
Though as a warning, I should point out I may be a bit biased due to still being offended over how he boldly led us into doing nothing about the whole genocide thing. I was young enough at that time that it actually shocked me. Realizing the whole moral authority the United States likes to pretend it has in foriegn affairs was a lie was something of a big deal to me.
To this day, I don’t know how anyone can tolerate that the United States government knew perfectly full sail genocide was the plan and chose not to even attempt to combat it. Hundreds of thousands of people died. The United States couldn’t have prevented that entirely, but it could have saved a lot of those lives. Bill Clinton was just too much of a coward.
JD Ohio
Sure.
But until I saw him coming out with the music playing…. I could never have thought of just how this gaffe could be worked.
I went to youtube and watched the music from the movie and the scene. I thought, “Woah. Just whoa!”
We’ll see. But at this point, I don’t know how Hilary can put “Deplorables” behind her.
Lucia: “I don’t know how Hilary can put “Deplorables†behind her.”
….I don’t think she can. It will be a gaping wound for the whole campaign. However, other issues will arise.
JD
Lucia: Here is a pre-Trump entrance column stating that Clinton’s gaffe may have cost her the election. http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/lindavaldez/2016/09/12/valdez-hillary-helps-herself-lose-double-standard-election/90266298/ The writer whines all the way through the article and puts 90% of the blame on everyone except Clinton.
…. A New York magazine article begins: “For all of her famed competence…” [Clinton can still stumble] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/12/magazine/watching-and-wincing-as-clinton-stumbles.html?_r=0
… In what universe any human being can speak of Clinton’s “famed competence”, it is beyond me.
JD
JD Ohio
I did see that before. But until I saw Trump’s linking this to the Les Mis music, I thought she might still survive this mostly because the news cycle would move on and would be limited to people discussing her statement. That puts it on a sort of “thinking” plane. The potential damage is on the “feeling” plane.
Mine you: I did already think her handling post-speech was pretty bad.
Pre-Trump “Les Mis” conversion of the gaff, I was struck by this
“I regret saying ‘half'” is not, not, not a “real apology”. It’s a classic “not-pology”. She didn’t acknowledge wrong doing– that is calling voters “deplorable”. She regretted saying ‘half’. Evidently some other fraction is more correct. (What fraction is not revealed. Was it 90%? 10%? A coupld of supporters? The audience is left to guess. And anyone who thought she meant them isn’t going to think she’s apologized or gone back on her labeling them deplorable.)
That someone would think what she said remotely constituted a “real apology” is a symptom of utter blindness. So it’s hardly surprising other things suggest they are wearing political blinders.
That said: at least the author of that article did know the statement was damaging. It was. But I think it’s gotten worse.
Well…. it’s a long shot. But Johnson is moving up in the Polls. If no candidate gets a majority of the votes in the Electoral college, it goes to the House of Representatives.
Gosh… can one state go for Johnson? Two? Oy!
Brandon, I am always impressed on your scholarship. You had to be very young in the Clinton years. I followed politics since being a teen watching the Watergate hearings since the stepped on all the regular programming (way before cable.) BTW, Watergate was completely unnecessary in light of the weak candidacy of George McGovern and his VP pick problems. So should the DNC dirty tricks be judged by the necessity? Obviously foul play is just as corrupt either way.
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Clinton’s budget showdown with Speaker Newt Gingrich that led to the first government shutdown revealed to the Obama Presidency that the media would always blame such an impasse on a GOP congress rather than the Dem president. Gingrich got ousted as speaker and was forced to retire and watch Clinton take the credit for the 2000 balanced budget. Before the 1995-96 impasse Reagan and Bush were held captive by congress to sign all or nothing budgets. Reagan campaigned unsuccessfully (thank goodness) for presidential line-item veto authority.
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Clinton had Dick Morris as his closest adviser in the 2nd term, got him to sign welfare reform and other GOP compromises. Since leaving in 2001 Morris has been sounding the alarm of Hillary’s presidential aspirations and their danger to the country since she is nothing like Bill.
lucia:
An apology requires two elements: 1) An acknowledgment of fault; 2) an expression of contrition. A notpology is something expressed in the form of an apology which lacks these characteristics. You may believe a person can only think, “Last night I was ‘grossly generalistic,’ and that’s never a good idea,” is an acknowledgment of fault due to utter blindness. You may believe a person can only think, ” I regret saying ‘half’” is an expression of contrition because of utter blindness.
You may even believe Clinton “didn’t acknowledge wrong doing” when she said “that was wrong.” I can’t say I agree. I think this is a fairly weak apology, but I don’t see any reason to say it is a “not-pology.” By the way, while Clinton does actually clarify her point in the statement she gave, you are right to say:
Sadly, there is a tendency for people to decide comments about Trump supporters apply to people who are not Trump supporters (this has even been seen on this site in the last few days). Any politician should have known that would happen. How offended people get over what you say has more to do with how they feel about you than what you actually say.
The same thing happens if there’s just a tie. It is possible for both candidates to get 279 electoral votes. I don’t think the electoral map makes that a very plausible outcome, but it is a possibility.
Lucia: Clinton non-apology.
….What I can’t stand about her is that everything is evasion and dishonesty. As a lawyer, her technique jumps out at me. For instance, when Clinton made the joke about being allergic to Trump, it was not really a joke; rather, it was a way to distract attention away from health questions. It has been a long time, but my memory is that when Clinton was testifying at the Whitewater hearings, she would repeatedly state that the documents didn’t show such and such; she didn’t answer the question as to what the facts were. At the time, the press fawned over how brilliant she was, and all I could do was shake my head.
….About 3 weeks ago, I tried to listen to her just to see what she was up to. After 3 minutes, I couldn’t stand it and turned off the TV because she never directly answered a question. I figured there was no point in even listening to her because nothing was said that was authentic or that could be relied on. Listening to what she says is a total waste of time if you want to have an idea as to what she is thinking or might do.
….On a separate issue, I showed my 15-year-old son (who is a pretty talented youtube filmmaker for his age) the Trump Les Deplorables video, and he immediately got the joke and burst out laughing.
JD
Ron Graf:
I think I was eight when the Rwandan genocide happened. It’s what caused me to start following politics. I wanted to understand how I could watch people on television calmly talking about (what would eventually be) half a million people dying. I had learned about the horrors of hte Holocaust and how the whole worried had come to agree the genocides caused by Hitler were terrible, and I didn’t understand how they could stand by and let what seemed to be the same thing happen. Even worse was how the people I saw not on television seemed utterly apathetic about the issue.
At first I wanted to understand out of an idealistic hope of changing things. Nowadays I just want to understand because people scare me and understanding them is hopefully a way of protecting myself from pitchforks and torches being busted out.
Bill Clintons second term saw the high tech bubble inflate and burst. Terrorism was ignored and was growing in the background. All the 9/11 hijackers were allowed into the country and some were able to go to pilot training. The balanced budget may have been an artifact of the bubble. The recession that followed was not benign. It didn’t take hold until Clinton left office and 9/11 happened but the causes were Clintons.
Not surprised at all, but disappointed that the Johnson/Weld ticket wasn’t allowed in the debate. I’m pulling strongly for them as a reasonable alternative to the deplored Clinton & Trump.
After Andrew and Lyndon, the country needs another Johnson in the White House.
Mike and Brandon, thank you. I was afraid that it might have been the case that times were good despite Bill rather than because of him, and it sounds like an argument can be made that that was the case. In particular Brandon, thanks for reminding me of the Rwanda Genocide and that we ignored it.
David, thanks as well.
No Brandon:
Your estimate of what an “apology” requires is not complete. It’s pretty widely thought there are more than 2 elements of an apology: Google it. Most discussions list 5-6.
But even using your tally of 2, her not-pology doesn’t cut it. Because even those that list only two elements require something more than any old wrong. The “wrong” in the apology has to be the specific injury to the third party she injured through the specific action that caused the injury.
Her “specific wrong” is to have injured (a) those who she either did accuse of being in the basket, (b) those who might think she was accusing of being in the basket or (c) those who might think others now think belongs in the basket.
The way she wronged them was not bey being “generalistic” but labeling them and accusing them of being “deplorable” and being “[[insert lists of all the phobias here”. She slurred them.
Nothing in her not-pology identified the specific wrong nor acknowleged that she harmed anynone. Saying you were ‘too generalistic’, doesn’t do that.
So neither you nor she can turn ithat into an “real apology” by finding the irrelevant ‘wrong’ of “being generalistic” wedged in there that she then “regrets”. That’s not “the” wrong from the point of view of those she harmed.
Or, it’s not the wrong unless one thinks the apology is to her supporters. Because the being “generalistic” may be a political blunder– and perhaps her supporters might want an “apology” for her political blunder which caused harm to her and so, indirectly, to those who wish to see her elected.
But wrt to the people she accused, labeled and insulted: That was a not-pology because it doesn’t acknowledge the harm to them and doesn’t express regret for that harm.
No amount of Jesuit casuitry is going to make most of those she insulted think or feel she apologized. Mind you: those who are sure she didn’t insult them might think that “apologizing” for the “math error” of 1/2 (or being generalistic), it the
JD Ohio
Did you read Peggy Noonan’s WSJ article today? About Travelgate? It’s worth a read.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/travel-back-to-an-early-clinton-scandal-1473982077?tesla=y
A refresher of what it was.
It goes on of course.
Later
The reason people suspect a pattern in the whole “it’s allergies”…. “overheated”….. “pneumonia” thing is that that’s the beginning of the pattern we’ve seen over and over and over.
I said earlier that all Hillary Clinton has to do to gain an easy victory over Donald Trump is to carefully guard her reserves of stamina and energy; to keep up with the task of explaining and defending her policy positions at every opportunity; to keep exposing Donald Trump’s basic character flaws for what they are — racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic — and to let The Gaffinator himself demonstrate day by day, week by week, just how terrible a choice he is for becoming the leader of a large multi-cultural democracy.
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There’s one other thing she needs to do, and that’s not to assume her election is inevitable. For those of us who think a Trump presidency is inconceivable, the fact remains that he was able to get the Republicans to nominate him when there were much better candidates among their ranks. By the time the other Republican hopefuls realized what was needed to defeat Donald Trump, it was too late. They had all been so thoroughly over-scripted by their Republican consultant class handlers, and for so long a time during the course of their primary campaigns, they couldn’t respond to Trump’s in-your-face tactics and say what needed to be said, in the way it needed to be said, to defeat him.
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The forthcoming debates will be an important opportunity for Hillary Clinton to promote her own policy positions on the issues while at the same time drawing a powerful contrast between her style of governance and Donald Trump’s. She has to be light on her feet rhetorically; i.e., rather than being highly scripted, she needs to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. If she keeps her cool and maintains a focus on her policy positions while at the same time keeping pressure on The Gaffinator to explain his many bizarre actions over the last year and to defend his constantly shifting positions on the issues, she won’t have any trouble convincing the voters that she is the better choice by far to run the country for the next four years.
Beta
I don’t think she has that in her.
Lucia quoting Noonan article: “They all included a startling willingness—and ability—to dissemble.
People watched and got a poor impression.”
….I had forgotten how disgusting this episode was. Going back even further Clinton stole $100,000 from other commodity investors in the 1970s. (Her trader, looking for favors from Bill, simply allocated the good trades to her and the bad trades to others) Clinton’s story that even though she had turned out to be a commodity trading genius, going from a $1,000 investment to $100,000 on her first try is disproven by the fact that, as greedy as she is, she never did it again. About a month ago the NYTs ran a story trying to get sympathy for Clinton explaining that she had developed all sorts of financial worries while Bill had been governor and lost. This concern for financial matters pretty much closes the door on any claim that she just walked away from commodity trading after a supposedly stupendously successful first try.
…This pathetically corrupt activity in financial markets is what causes me to get angry at Buffett and Mark Cuban for supporting her.
JD
Lucia:
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The public would likely not known the of Clinton’s concussion had she not had to postpone her appearance before the House committee hearings on Benghazi, and then when she did testify, wearing the clunky, anti-doublevision glasses.
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Brandon, (or anyone,) considering the pattern of secrecy and forced and ever-changing stories, do you sincerely believe that we would have heard about overheating or pneumonia had there not been the video?
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Timeline:
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August 23, 2016: Hillary Clinton Is Fine
Clinton took to Jimmy Kimmel Live
Clinton then preceded to open a pickle jar to demonstrate her vigor. [Alex Jones notices there was no “pop,” which launched “picklegate.”]
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September 2, 2016 According to Dr. Bardack’s letter of 9-14, Clinton had a fever of 99.4F on 9-2 and was worsening.
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September 5, 2016: Clinton told the press that her chronic cough is caused by seasonal allergies. Clinton told reporters that she “upped her antihistamine load.” For those who have had pneumonia, did you get a histamine response like a cold gives? The one case of pneumonia I’m familiar with had cough and increasing fever with no runny nose.
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9:30am, September 11, 2016: HRC’s legs buckle as she is lifted into car. Shortly thereafter, video emerges of the event.
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11:00am, September 11, 2016: After over an hour of media silence, and after the video had gone viral, the campaign issues a statement that Clinton was forced to leave the ceremony early because she was feeling “overheated.”
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12:50am, Hillary Is “Feeling Great”
Clinton emerges from her daughters apartment smiling and waiving to reports who shout to her, “What happened?” She says she feels “great” and “it’s a beautiful day in New York.”
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5:00pm, September 11, 2016: The HRC campaign announces that Hillary had been diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday of last week.
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September 12, 2016: Hillary’s Pneumonia Is Contagious
Campaign sources told People Magazine that the pneumonia that felled Clinton on September 11th has been spreading through the ranks of the campaign for several weeks.
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People reports:
Beta, Clinton is intrinsically dishonest and corrupt; she can’t be light on her feet as she has proven over and over again. Her only hope is that Trump implodes. If he does well, she won’t be able to counter.
JD
Ron, thanks for the timeline, I was hoping that someone would put together exactly what had occurred on Sept. 11 and what was said.
JD
Ron—given Hillary could serve her full term in a wheel chair (FDR served in four terms in a wheel chair after all), honestly I care much more about their finances here. Though I agree more transparency on health needs to be present.
One of the reasons (there are several) that I will never vote for Trump is his refusal to release his tax returns:
The right has completely lost its way IMO when it thinks it’s okay to discuss Bill Clinton’s sex life but defends Trump’s “right to privacy” with respect to his tax returns.
This needed to have been vetted during the Republican primaries. I think the Republicans and Democrats need to change their rules so it’s disqualifying for a potential candidate to not include the tax returns in their application.
Carrick: [the right] “defends Trump’s “right to privacy†with respect to his tax returns.”
… I am on the right, and I definitely believe that his tax returns should be released. On the other hand, with all the dirt associated with this election, I am not going to do the heavy lifting to get it done. I would also add that complete medical records — not doctor’s summaries should also be released, and are equally important.
Carrick: “Hillary could serve her full term in a wheel chair (FDR served in four terms in a wheel chair after all)” This is highly misleading. High Blood Pressure and Congestive Heart failure killed Roosevelt; not being in a wheelchair.
JD
JD—From my perspective, it’s now too late for Trump to rectify the situation. He avoided the scrutiny of other candidates, and was allowed to unfairly slide into the general election without the scrutiny he should have received. For me this is disqualifying.
But I’m not sure what you think is misleading about FDR serving while in a wheelchair. He did.
My point would be that Clinton could have “wobbly legs” to the point where she was effectively restricted to a wheelchair (as FDR clearly was), but as long as her mental facilities remained sharp, it wouldn’t impair her ability to serve as POTUS.
Carrick,
I agree that being in a wheel chair does not prevent someone from being an effective President. Quite often, it is not an indicator that someone might die or become incapacitated soon. So, it could be fine.
Hillary is not making that case. She is not trying to make that case.
Really, I don’t get why she doesn’t ask for a stool while speaking, and just say that for the next two weeks she will be using one.
Ok… I’m not a campaign manager, and maybe I’m wrong that it would be the better course. But it seems to me that that compromise for her health and stamina while recovering from pneumonia could garner sympathy. It would also match the story that it is pneumonia.
Carrick,
Who precisely on ‘the right’ is defending Trump’s right to privacy? It certainly isn’t the WSJ editorial staff, for example. I don’t think you can make that a generalization. Trump supporters may think of themselves as right wing, but they do not define it.
Carrick: “But I’m not sure what you think is misleading about FDR serving while in a wheelchair. He did. ”
Wheelchair has little to do with his longevity or ability to complete term or cognition. Congestive heart failure, on the other hand is life threatening as was correctly predicted by Dr. Frank Lahey. It is possible that Clinton’s thrombosis or blood clot in the transverse sinus vein would be life threatening, or affect her cognition, in the event of a stroke.
JD
http://blurbrain.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Les-Deplorables.jpg
Hillary has pretty much complete contempt for about 90% of us. Her comments about the “basket of deplorables” were just her mask slipping for a few seconds. I have no advice for Hillary. She is the problem and I don’t think she can be fixed.
She has so much contempt she feels no need for honesty or integrity when dealing with the average American. She treats us like idiots. If elected the treatment will continue. Hillary is sick in several ways. We have a had enough of a taste of Hillary, time to summon the waiter and send it back.
I’m going to join “Les Deplorables” to make sure no one mistakes me for a Hillary supporter.
Carrick, I not only agree with you about the tax returns but I think they should have to submit to a polygraph with 50 standard question, 10 questions of the media’s choosing and and 5 from each opponent over 10% in the polls.
.
JD’s point was disputing FDR’s wheelchair was in fact a health issue. And clearly today one can play basketball or race a marathon in a wheelchair. The point is:
1) We shouldn’t have to guess if the candidate has serious diagnosed health issue. Full medical records, not personal doctor statement, should be disclosed.
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2) If we find a candidate is generally opaque or dishonest regarding their health, or other aspects of their resume, the people have a right to know.
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3) Sex lives should be off limits but infidelity in the White House affects national security. Also, using the full power of the presidency to silence or destroy a young intern, who only was exonerated because she had the luck and sense to preserve DNA evidence, is not the same thing as a past fling.
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Carrick, do reasonably believe that we would know about Clinton’s recent illness if there hadn’t been a person recording with a cell phone before the Secret Service could block view?
JD Ohio,
In FDR’s time, congestive heart failure wasn’t just life threatening, it was pretty much a death sentence. Most of the current treatment options simply weren’t available then.
Dewitt: “In FDR’s time, congestive heart failure wasn’t just life threatening, it was pretty much a death sentence.”
I pretty much understood that. I was trying to keep it simple, since I am not sure whether today heart transplants are available for patients with congestive heart failure. No matter how you look at it, the public in 1944 would have wanted to know whether Roosevelt had congestive heart failure, and it would have been relevant to the election.
JD
lucia, sorry, but no:
I’m not going to argue a point when you begin with, “Google it” while being incapable of reporting what Google says with any accuracy. Here are the entries that show up when I use your Google query:
The list goes on like that, but the point is what I made bold in each of these entries – the word “effective.” The requirements for an effective apology are stricter than the requirements for just making an apology. Combine that with you adding the random and baseless requirement:
The requirement an apology list a “specific injury” through a “specific action” isn’t real. A person can apologize without even mentioning what they did or what harm they caused. Whether you like it or not, “I’m sorry” on its own can be a genuine apology.
While you may feel saying an apology merely requires acknowledging fault and expressing remorse is just “Jesuit casuistry,” I think most people will understand saying, “I’m sorry,” can be an apology. I suspect that will remain true even if you say it doesn’t meet the 5-6 criteria of an “apology” while pointing to the criteria of an “effective apology” and pretending the two are the same thing.
Brandon,
The reason the other apologies are “ineffective” is because people know those are not apologies.
It’s one thing to just say you are sorry and leave what for inferred. But this doesn’t cut it if “I’m sorry” it specifically associated with a “fake ‘wrong'” for which one is supposedly “sorry”.
So: no amount Jesuit causistry is going to turn her not-apology into an apology. It’s not an apology.
For wat it’s worth: It’s your argument that is Jesuit causistry.
Ron Graf:
That’s an interesting belief given Clinton had to work part-time for a while due to her concussion. I’m not sure how you think Clinton would have explained working part-time for weeks or months after collapsing without disclosing that she had a concussion. Let’s just say I find your expectations of what would happen to be… implausible.
I don’t know where to respond to this due to the number of assumptions you rest your question on. I guess I could start with, “What do you mean by ‘the video'”? There was more than one video. Beyond that, of course I think “we would have heard about overheating or pneumonia” regardless of any video evidence. Even without video, people would have seen what happened and it would have been discussed.
Even if that were true, Clinton had to days off campaigning. That couldn’t have gone unexplained, and pneumonia would have been the best explanation for it.
I don’t know why you say “sources” when the article clearly says a campaign “source.” Beyond that, the source never said any staffers had pneumonia. While People Magazine makes that claim, it merely attribute to the source that the staffers got sick due to a bug that was going around.
Actually, despite what you say, I’m not sure even People makes that claim. Their wording doesn’t make it clear they are. Even if it did though, you’re talking about People Magazine’s portrayal of what a single unnamed person with an undisclosed role in the campaign said. Plenty of other reporting didn’t find that idea credible enough to report it themselves for a reason.
Wikipedia– on the non-apology apology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-apology_apology
This is what clinton did. She did not address the people who were injured or insulted. Nor did she even acknowledge she had injured or insulted anyone. She might as well have been saying “Whoop! I said 2+2=5. That was a mistake. I regret it”. Yes. That contains a “wrong”– a math error. And she “regrets” it. It’s not an “apology”.
Her statement have the superficial form of an apology while not being one. Claiming that that conforming to the superficial form of merely containing a wrong and regretting it… no.. doesn’t make it an apology. It’s precisely the characteristic of a “not-pology” to do that.
lucia:
Come on lucia. You know better than this. People wouldn’t report lists of criteria for how to give an “effective apology” that were exactly identical to the what the criteria for an “apology” is. You pretending there is no difference between the requirements for an “apology” and those for an “effective apology” is stooopid, as you like to say.
Yes, we get it lucia. You’re going to tell people to “Google it” to find the criteria for an “apology” which is really the criteria for an “effective apology” which you’re just going to pretend is the same thing. When they point out what makes something an “apology” is not the same thing that makes it an “effective apology,” you’ll dismiss it as “Jesuit causistry.” You don’t need to clarify what you’re referring to. We all get it.
While we all get it, I don’t know how many of us will agree. Additionally, I doubt many people, including yourself, genuinely believe an apology must list specific injuries and the specific actions which caused them. I suspect everyone here, including yourself, would not include that requirement in their day-to-day lives.
Brandon
Your trying to claim your position is somehow “better” doesn’t save your position. It is simply the case the reason the “ineffective” apologies are ineffective is they are not apologies. And if you don’t know this, it you, who for some reason are unable to grasp what is correct.
Good luck handing out those sort of “apologies” and accepting people to believe they are “apologies”. People might not press you on it, but most will recognize they are “not-pologies”.
With respect to me, I assure you you are wrong. And in my experience, lots of people agree with me.
In fact: so many people agree with me that the term “not-pology” exists: Lots of people understand that cloaking something in the superficial form of an apology doesn’t make it an apology. They agree so much that a word exists to describe these things.
Hillary’s statement was a “not-pology”.
Clinton Sincerity:
At about the 29 second mark in the video linked Clinton states “Together we can build a future … where love trumps [Trumps ?] hate.” http://theamericanmirror.com/video-hillary-ends-speech-coughs/
JD
JD Ohio,
That’s only a very slight cough. It could be in the process of clearing up.
Germany’s finance minister Schäuble operates from a wheel chair and he’s very effective…
Brandon wrote: “I doubt many people, including yourself, genuinely believe an apology must list specific injuries and the specific actions which caused them. I suspect everyone here, including yourself, would not include that requirement in their day-to-day lives.”
Context generally makes that superfluous. Of course, in individual interactions we don’t use formal rules to decide if something is an apology; we know an apology when we hear one and a nonpology when we hear one when. And on that basis we can decide whether or not to accept the proffered apology. But when you are not apologizing one-on-one, the context may no longer be obvious, and so often needs explaining. The “rules” Lucia cites are merely an analysis of what we do intuitively.
Lucia is entirely correct here. When I saw Clinton’s “apology” my reaction was that she was not apologizing to the people she insulted, she was apologizing to her supporters for screwing up.
Clinton’s communication style could be improved considerably if she took the simple step of not taking herself so seriously all the time. A few stiff drinks before each of the debates might help loosen her up. (Whatever.)
In any case, she needs to do what Donald Trump’s Republican opponents never quite figured out how to do, and that is to find a way to highlight just how truly absurd most of his talking points are without setting herself up for a rhetorical counterpunch.
JD, that was Hillary’s website in either March or April. It was basically saying all over LOVE TRUMP.
Exactly.
It was a major gaffe and she’s done her usual lousy job of cleaning up after herself. You would have thought she would have known better after the flap in 2008 over Obama’s comment:
Lucia, I wasn’t aware of the alternative explanations for TravelGate. Billy Dale was prosecuted, and the jury acquitted fast.
Lucia: “JD Ohio,
That’s only a very slight cough. It could be in the process of clearing up.”
….I specifically left out any reference to her cough although it was mentioned in the link. It was admittedly a small cough, which could be nothing. The only reason I linked to the video was her reference to love as trumping hate — as though her campaign was attempting to be unifying force.
JD
lucia:
You can insist ineffective apologies are not apologies all you want, and you can personalize it by saying things like:
But the reality is an apology can be both a real apology and ineffective. That’s how adjectives work. An ineffective apology can be a real apology and not a “not-pology.” Similarly, while you can say things like:
Me disputing that something is a “not-pology” in no way implies there is no such thing as a not-pology. This is as obvious a straw man as if you called a cat a dog, I said I thought it was cat rather than a dog and you said, “You’re wrong! Dogs are real!”
This is beyond stooopid, and I’m not going to continue in any further. You are free to continue to dismiss my comments as “Jesuit casuitry” or “Jesuit causistry” with casual bigotry* and poor spelling, but the reality is the sophistry in this exchange is coming from you.
*For the record, I do not think this bigotry is intentional. I think somebody here just doesn’t really know what the word “casuistry” means. I could be wrong about this, but I just can’t imagine lucia is trying to sugget my logic is Catholic.
Lucia the bigot huh.
Lol. Welcome to the deplorables m’lady.
More NYTs hate: Charles Blow recent column: :Trump, Grand Wizard of Birtherism” See http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/19/opinion/trump-grand-wizard-of-birtherism.html?ribbon-ad-idx=2&rref=opinion&module=Ribbon&version=context®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&pgtype=article
…It is getting boring to bring these types of matters. However, the Left thinks that hate is only coming from one place.
JD
JD
Yeah.. It’s hardly like she is one big bundle of giving oozing love!
Brandon: Hilary’s statement had all the hallmarks of a not-apology. Your complaints about spelling and typos add no more strength to your arguments than your silly rhetorical flourishes like “you know better than that”.
Mike M.:
In real life, social interactions are often complex enough we may not know the specific actions and specific injuries they cause which we wish to apologize for. Apologies are often non-specific because we understand we’ve done something wrong and hurt somebody without knowing just what it was. This is particularly true since the people we hurt may not feel like talking to us to help us figure things out. If you accept you can apologize for hurting someone without knowing just what you did to hurt them or how it hurt them, then lucia’s claim an apology requires acknowledgment of specific actions and specific injuries must be false.
By your own words, lucia is wrong. lucia said this was not an apology. You say it was an apology. The two positions are not compatible.
As for who Clinton apologized to, she wasn’t just apologizing to her supporters. She was apologizing to people in general. The apology was not directed at the people she offended, but rather, to everybody everywhere. That’s actually a reasonable approach (though the apology was still weak) given a large number of the people offended by what she said weren’t people she was talking about.
When people feel you’ve insulted them when you haven’t said anything offensive about them, it is difficult to direct an apology to the people you offended. Instead, it is usually better to direct the apology at everyone and apologize for the wrong-doing. You then adddress the offense people took by clarifying what you meant, generally explaining who you did and did not mean to say negative things about. That’s what Clinton did. While her apology was weak, she apologized for doing something wrong, expressed regret over it, clarified what she meant and offered empathy for (some of) the people she hurt.
lucia, and your bigoted language does nothing to help your case either. Choosing to focus only on the aspects of a comment you find irrelevant may allow you to ignore the relevant aspects, but it doesn’t make them magically disappear.
Seriously, bigoted language. I wouldn’t have even pointed out the typos excpet BIGOTED LANGUAGE.
JD Ohio might be bothered by Charles Blow’s article, but even in admitting his sordid role in elevating the birther movement, Trump’s statement was filled with lies – that Hillary started it and that once he compelled the certificate release in 2011, he finished it. Even in 2012, he was still bringing it up.
Brandon wrote: “This is beyond stooopid, and I’m not going to continue in any further. ”
Too bad he didn’t mean it.
Accusing you of complaining about typos is bnot “bigotted language”. Nor is pointing out that arguments like “you know better than that” “biggoted language”.
MIke M.:
I have not and will not continue discussing whether or not Hillary Clinton’s statement constitutes an apology with lucia. That in no way precludes me from responding to her regarding other things, such as her use of bigoted language.
I’m not bothered by Blow’s article. Trump certainly embraced the role of birther in the past. There isn’t any question of it.
Trump didn’t start it– but I don’t think anyone ever accused him of starting it. Merely embracing it and whipping up the issue.
It appears it was started by some obscure guy (I’d have to google again.) Some of Hillary’s staff circulated some Obama in a turban thing and some other stuff that falls in the general “he’s not American” stuff. It appears that staff was let go promptly. As far as I am aware there is nothing else anyone might interpret as evidence she was circulating any “birther” stuff or encouraging people to do so.
Trump hasn’t brought up evidence she started it– so I assume he has none either. Likely the reason no one has any is there is none.
lucia:
Thank you for clarifying things nobody said were exhibitions of bigoted language are not in fact exhibitions of bigoted language. I am sure we will all sleep a little easier tonight because of it.
We might all sleep even better if you would stop creating obvious strawmen. Telling people things nobody called bigoted language are not bigoted language does nothing to discuss what was clearly labeled as bigoted language. It just makes it look like you are resorting to sophistry.
And guys, see how I said “sophistry” instead of “Jesuit sophistry,” “Jewish sophistry,” “Hispanic sophistry” or anything like that? That’s how you avoid using bigoted langauge. You may be surprised to find it’s not difficult.
Brandon,
I didn’t use bigoted language.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/09/17/clinton-campaign-blumenthal-fight-back-against-accusations-spreading-birth-rumor.html
Brandon,
I have no idea which language you consider bigoted. If it’s “Jesuit causitry”, that is a specific type with specific applications and was abhorred by one of the RC popes. So it is hardly ‘anti-catholic’ to identify it when it is indulged in. Nor is it bigotted to use an adjective to identify the subtype– not if that is the adjective that is used.
More generally use of the term “Jesuit” as an adjective is no more a sign of bigotry than “Jesuit University” or “Jesuit order” or anything else. There are many things associated with Jesuits based on their history, writings, mission and so on.
I’m now tempted to tell Popsie Wopsie’s joke about the Dominican and the Franciscan. . .
Brandon: “That’s an interesting belief [that the pubic was unaware of her concussion when it happened] given Clinton had to work part-time for a while due to her concussion.”
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Do you have a source for the public announcement of her working part-time after the concussion before the this month’s Labor Day Friday FBI data dump of their sanitized report notes of the HRC’s interview?
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I’m pretty sure the public was unaware of her concussion before the Benghazi committee hearing. It doesn’t count that “the important people” knew. That is Michael Mann’s argument about MBH98, 99 hockey stick and Nature trick, BTW.
Ok.. I had to hunt for the joke. I knew it would be online. This is close.
(Popsie Wopsie’s version was better, involved saying novena’s and waiting for a sign. You can find more jesuit jokes here. http://www.ignatianspirituality.com/dotmagis-blog/more-jesuit-jokes These are very popular with Catholics. Take my word for it. )
Brandon:
.
Having a story for not being out on the campaign trail for three days would have been the easiest lie she ever told. It really wouldn’t even count as a lie since her illness was deemed “no big deal.”
lucia:
It’s remarkable you “have no idea which language” I was referring to given I specifically labeled it. Perhaps you should try reading what you respond to.
No, it isn’t actually. While the specific details of any individual case of casuistry would obviously vary, there was no specific type of casuistry identified by the Jesuit term. Jesuit casuistry was simply the casiustry carried out by Jesuits. The casuistry they used does not have any unique characteristcs that would help identify what a person is doing save in historical or religious context.
Adding the word “Jesuit” to your sentences did not convey any useful information as to what was meant.
Yes, and there is nothing inherent to the use of the word “gay” which makes it a sign of bigotry. Still, if I said you engage in “gay casuistry,” I would be using bigoted language.
Brandon,
You are really beclowning yourself. Seriously.
These jokes about orders are great!
RB “Ohio might be bothered by Charles Blow’s article, but even in admitting his sordid role in elevating the birther movement, Trump’s statement was filled with lies –”
…That doesn’t excuse linking him to the KKK.
JD
Those are two great jokes, Lucia. thanks.
JD,
Ahh.. Yeah. “Grand Wizard” is a bit much. Point taken.
It didn’t hit me. Probably because we don’t have much in the way of KKK around here.
j ferguson,
Yeah.
They remind me of Father Bob, Monseigneur Koenig, Popsie Wopsie, the Fredricks and Dr Schwarz all exchanging jokes at dinner. Dr. Schwarz was Jewish, so he usually knew the good Jewish jokes while the others specialized in Catholic. Monseigneur Koenig was especially good with the Catholic Jokes, But Popsie Wopsie could certainly pull his weight.
Dad had one about about the Irish Catholic boys going to confession….
JD:
You mean, by calling him a Grand Wizard? I suppose it is a play on the fact that Trump is referred to in the media often as the master wizard (probably inspired by Scott Adams’ admiring descriptions). And the birther movement has been deeply offensive to the African American community , many of whom are in resignation having seen racism their entire lives, and see racist tones in its usage of apparently delegitimizing the first African American president.
Birther Controversy
….Particularly at this stage, I think this is a big to do about nothing. Personally, whether Obama was a natural born citizen or not means nothing to me. Even if he was not, I would still not raise the Constitutional Issue, the provision is obviously outdated. The faux outrage over this issue is way overdone. Even assuming arguendo that Obama was not a natural born citizen, he was still an American. If we have a stupid legalistic provision in the Constitution, people can try to use it. [again, I wouldn’t use it] It doesn’t reflect on Obama as an American, it only reflects on his legalistic eligibility to be President. He, for some reason, chose to wait until 2011 to release the long-form birth certificate.
…
If we are going to talk about apologizing for lies, maybe Obama can apologize for lying that no one would lose their current coverage under Obamacare. This lie is responsible for the fraudulent passage of Obamacare. Also, Trump’s presumed lies (I have read nothing about his statements in this matter, so I will assume he lied) are nothing compared to Clinton’s email lies — she had important security responsibilities and grossly failed to carry out her responsibilities, putting the lives of American operatives at risk and lied about how she cared out her responsibilities.
JD
RB: “birther movement has been deeply offensive to the African American community , many of whom are in resignation having seen racism their entire lives, and see racist tones in its usage of apparently delegitimizing the first African American president.”
….I know that, and I partially understand their feelings although they are overblown. However, at this stage, Trump repudiated his statements, and it is time to move on. Maybe the Black Caucus may want to focus on the issue of why Black Americans lives have not improved under Obama.
JD
Interesting how Trump chooses to insult certain people:
Maureen Dowd: neurotic
Debbie Wasserman: neurotic
female pastor: nervous mess
Mika Brzezinski: neurotic
Trump may not be racist or misogynist, we cannot mind-read, but he certainly says things in a way that align such people behind him (including being endorsed by the KKK).
RB: “You mean, by calling him a Grand Wizard? I suppose it is a play on the fact that Trump is referred to in the media often as the master wizard….”
… No I mean it is an explicit, dirty cheap shot by Blow. He has no moral authority in this matter when he takes such cheap shots.
JD
JD: it may be overblown to you..
As for the lives that have not been improved under Obama, certainly, a lot of policies being pursued at the national level, including traditional GOP priorities have not mattered to the lower economic stratus population at large. At the top of the list seems to be free trade which has brought too much change too fast for people who work with their hands and where the working class have been losers. This is also tied to immigration, but starts with the jobs that have gone overseas. No mexican wall is going to cure that problem.
JD: I don’t think it’s a cheap shot but a response in kind to the racist colors that Trump has coated himself with and wants to evade by double-speak.
Lucia,
“You are really beclowning yourself. Seriously.”
.
Clowns seldom can see that they are clowns. Dead people seldom see that they are dead. Nor can they step back, even for a moment, and accept the possibility that they are mistaken, about anything. It is, at bottom, what makes them clowns.
NYT’s clueless whining: “Routine falsehoods, unfounded claims and inflammatory language have long been staples of Mr. Trump’s anything-goes campaign. But as the polls tighten and November nears, his behavior, and the implications for the country should he become president, are alarming veteran political observers — and leaving them deeply worried about the precedent being set, regardless of who wins the White House.” http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/us/politics/donald-trump-presidential-race.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
….I can think of someone else who this language applies to and her initials are HC.
JD
RB,
“At the top of the list seems to be free trade which has brought too much change too fast for people who work with their hands and where the working class have been losers.”
.
This is a complicated issue, worthy of a dedicated thread (or 10). Trade brings advantages to many, but real disadvantages to some. In a broader view, the challenge we (humanity) face is how to transition from the world today, where labor, in simple form, still has value, to a world where simple labor is of ever diminishing value. Yes, in Florida, we still pay for people to cut the grass. But when cutting the grass is done by intellegent grass cutting machines a decade or two hence, what will the grass cutters do? I honestly don’t think anyone is considering this. It is a real and growing problem, accelerated by ever increasing technological sophistication. Consider the relative cost of a self driving car and a standard car with a human (hourly) driver. IMO, the hourly driver is toast. Tied to this technological change is the growing value of capital (eg, to purchase the intellegent grass cutting machines and self driving cars), and the falling value of simple labor. When I listen to politicians, I am always struck by how utterly disconnected they are from this approaching technological revolution. Politicians are almost never ‘geeks’. It shows.
Anyone looking for a different take might read: “The Intellectual Yet Idiot” essay by Nassim Taleb. It is as if he had lived with Hillary for a year before he wrote it.
I don’t get the joke, SJ?
I definitely was helped by the use of Jesuit, as I had never heard of casiustry.
Hillary’s mild cough- if you watch her convention speech, you can see she clears her throat slightly during every applause.
lucia:
Oddly enough, you’re not the first person defending their use of bigoted language to tell me that, in almost those exact words. I’m not sure they said “really,” but they definitely said “beclowning yourself” and, “Seriously.”
But hey, I’m sure attacks against a person will convince at least some people the unhelpful additional of proper adjective referring to a religious group in a negative remark is not bigoted.
MikeN:
So you had never heard of “casiustry” before, but the adjective “Jesuit” made the meaning more clear to you. How exactly does that work? Did you go, “Oh! She’s referencing a type of Catholics, so obviously that word must mean a type of irrationality!”
I’m thinking that’s not how it happened. I’m thinking if you didn’t know what casuistry was, the addition of the word “Jesuit” wouldn’t help you as simply searching for the definition of casuistry would get you results like:
Which would make lucia’s point perfectly clear and leave the use of “Jesuit” as an unnecessary modifier referencing a religious group in a phrase used for derogatory purposes – perhaps the most common way in which people use bigoted language.
I could be wrong though. I would love to hear how the use of “Jesuit casuistry” made lucia’s point more clear than if she had just said “casuistry.”
Well, I was not aware of the irrationality part of the definition. I just took it to mean sophistry.
Wikipedia lists two definitions, one negative and one neutral. So Jesuit would clarify, though not in the way that I was thinking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casuistry
MikeN:
This brings up a point I actually wrote about for a previous comment then deleted because I felt it was going too far afield. While the common usage definition of casuistry is like that I quoted above:
The word actually stems from a philosophical approach to examining problems. Put simply, the approach uses “case studies” in which one examines simple examples to determine what should be done then extrapolates from those simple cases to determine what should be done in more complex cases. This has a lot of similarities to how the legal system works in the United States with cases setting precedent for future decisions.
The negative connotation of casuistry came about due to people abusing this philosophical approach to support selfish views and beliefs. A group commonly associated with this practice was Jesuits several hundred years ago (though non-Jesuit Catholics contributed to the movement as well). Many people saw the abuses of the approach and came to distrust it. This was especially prevalent amongst Protestants who came to view casuistry as a way for Catholics to justify hypocrisy.
This negative association of casuistry with the abuses of Catholics, especially those who were Jesuits, caused the word to be commonly used like in the definition I quote above. That usage remained common long after Catholics abandoned casuistry, persisting for centuries up to modern times. Over those centuries, “casuistry” came to be just another word with a meaning similar to “sophistry.” The association with Jesuits was largely forgotten amongst most people.
Because that association was largely forgotten, nowadays the only time you’ll really hear about “Jesuit casuistry” is when people are talking about things like religion and history where the philosophical methodology is being referred to. This topic has actually garnered more attention in the last few decades as people have re-visited the philosophical approach behind casuistry to argue it was abuses of the methodology, not the methodology itself, which was the problem.
The result of all this is when a person says “casuistry,” the normal interpretation is that of the common usage – something along the lines of sophistry. When a person says “Jesuit casuistry,” the normal interpretation is the use and abuse of the philosophical methodology by certain Catholics several hundred years ago.
The only way lucia saying “Jesuit casuistry” made her meaning clearer than if she had simply said “casuistry” is if she wanted to draw some association between what I was saying and either religious groups or the specific abuses they carried out several hundred years ago. If she merely wanted to say I was engaging in something like sophistry, “casuistry” was the right word as “Jesuit” has nothing to do with the common usage we have nowadays. If she wanted to say I was engaging in an approach like the philosophical methodology underlying casuistry, the use of “Jesuit” was inappropriate as neither that methodology nor the abuses of it were a Jesuit phenomenon. Jesuits were simply one group which used and abused that methodology.
Put simply, the only function the word “Jesuit” in “Jesuit casuistry” could serve in lucia’s comments was to create an association with people of a particular religious group. Given that association was intended to be part of a negative depiction, the resulting function of the word “Jesuit” in “Jesuit casuistry” is painting a religious group in a negative light – bigotry.
And now you see why I originally chose not to write that out. I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone just skipped over that wall of text.
As a rebound for that wall of text, I’d like to say two things. First, I’d like to repeat what I said when I first brought the issue of bigoted language up: I do not believe the bigotry was intentional. As I said then, ” I think somebody here just doesn’t really know what the word ‘casuistry’ means.”
Given lucia has mentioned a Catholic upbringing before, I would imagine she has been exposed to the phrase “Jesuit casuistry” a number of times before in reference to the abuses of casuistry carried out by various Catholics several hundred years ago. I believe she said “Jesuit casuistry” simply because she had heard the phrased used that way many times and never considered that the “Jesuit” aspect of it made it reference a specific set of instances as opposed to casuistry in general. After all, people sometimes use bigoted language without realizing the bigotry involved.
Second, I’m a lover of philosophy who received three and a half years of education at a Lutheran school and finds legal systems fascinating. I never expected that combination to lead to me being so familiar with something that would come up in this way. Even so, I would love to discuss casuistry. It’s the sort of thing I find interesting.
So… yeah. Just warning you. This is the sort of topic I could go on and on about. I’ll try to limit the walls of text, but… you’ve been warned.
Lorazepam or just low energy?
https://youtu.be/K_F6l6__Ex0
.
HRC says “bombings” yet Trump get blasted by the media for using the same word. MSM biased…naah…
“So… yeah. Just warning you. This is the sort of topic I could go on and on about. I’ll try to limit the walls of text, but… you’ve been warned.”
Oh noes..not another Doug Cotton
MikeN,
Yes. Jesuit is clarifying. There is also “rabinnical casuistry”, “pluralistic casuistry’, “scientific causuistry”, “episcoppalian casuistry” , “protestant causuitry” and so on. All these adjectives all communicate something– and they communicate something specific about how causistry is used. And that something specific is more than pointing to a specific religion. How it was used, for what outcomes and so on differed.
Brandon is beclowing himself. I don’t feel any need to engage him on his imaginative (and long winded) theories. Had he simply asked early on why I picked that adjective, I would have happily explained. But at this point, he’s come up with an elaborate imaginitive theory, flung around accusations accompanied by words of wall….. Sorry. No. I’d rather talk with others.
“Brandon casuistry”?
MikeN,
I didn’t get it at first either. You have to know that ‘SJ’ means ‘Society of Jesus’, or in other words, Jesuit.
mark bofill,
When Popsie Wopsie told the joke at dinner, everyone got it. 🙂
On the topic of apologies, a take from Reason‘s Matt Welch. His scoreboard:
Gary Johnson – yes
Donald Trump – no
Hillary Clinton – no
Harold W
Politico — who is not shy of blasting Trump btw– also thinks it was not an apology
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/hillary-clinton-basket-deplorables-227988#ixzz4KcGajYlG
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/hillary-clinton-basket-deplorables-227988
It is unfortunate that a large fraction of the voting public are not old enough to remember Hillary’s dubious behavior. Three years after she insisted on the firing of career civil servents in the White house travel office, the truth was finally documented:
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/05/us/memo-places-hillary-clinton-at-core-of-travel-office-case.html?_r=0
What was Hillary trying to do? She was trying to give the White house travel budget (which is substantial) to a friend and political contributor who owned an air charter company. IOW, political corruption. As the scandal unfolded, the pattern of denial, lies, attempts to shift blame, obfuscation, and finally, ‘running out the clock’, was exactly the same pattern we would see repeated each time there was a ‘Clinton scandal’, and indeed, it is the same pattern as we see today with Hillary’s health. The travel office scandal was 23 years ago. Firing civil service employees for political reasons is unlawful, and she was never held to account. I wonder how many voters are completely unaware of Hillary’s history of deception. My guess is there are a lot.
These is purported to be an video of the explosion in chelsea.
Evidently, the bomb (if we are allowed to call it that) was inside a dumpster.
Re: travelgate. See a very informative Peggy Noonan piece in last week’s WSJ.
Brandon, for you:
http://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/the-flight-93-election/
and especially for you:
https://medium.com/@nntaleb/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577#.ki2tu3ffx
SteveF
And to achieve this end, she was not only willing to fire people but to set the FBI on them.
Cuomo
http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/18/us/new-york-explosion/
Lucia,
“… set the FBI on them.”
.
Another case of ‘willing to do bad things to innocent people to gain political or financial advantage.’
.
And another unlawful act for which the Clintons have never been held to account. But I do still wonder how many younger people who support Hillary are even aware of that scandal and how it evolved. My guess is very few. Would knowledge of Hillary’s political corruption change many votes? I don’t know, but I imagine some.
My impression is that the cell phone detonator thing is a fairly standard way of doing it in the Middle East. [Edit: but for all I know, a cell phone detonator may be the standard way of doing it everywhere…] Dunno.
Is ‘international terrorism’ supposed to be the politically correct way to refer to Islamic terrorism these days? (don’t know how rhetorical this is… My answer is, I guess?)
Hoi, Shollen casuistry.
For me the ‘Jesuit’ narrowed down what ‘casuistry’ means.
Some of you will note that Hilary said she’d been briefed on the bombings in NY, NJ and events in Minn. A WSJ headline reads
“Islamic State Outlet Claims Minnesota Mall Attacker as Soldier”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/islamic-state-outlet-claims-minnesota-mallattacker-as-soldier-1474214299?mod=e2tw
Brandon, I’m surprised to see you throw around such charges of bigotry, given that some of the things you write on your site would also qualify for people who routinely like to throw around such charges.
Are you a Jesuit and offended by it?
Two cents worth:
1¢) The election will be decided by one thing only: how Trump does with black voters. He should be spending a large fraction of his time speaking to them, from now till the election. They are a totally reliably Democratic vote my whole life, and have been totally destroyed as a result. Point that out, over and over. “Do you realize that 50% of black children in this country are not learning to read properly? That’s because the Democratic Party you vote for is controlled not by you, but by teachers’ unions that won’t let you fire bad teachers.” Etc.
Black Americans don’t really _care_ about his awful xenophobic immigration policies. In fact, they agree with them. He could do it; he could turn them. Don’t know anyone else who could.
2¢) I see a lot of people say “If only the Clintons could learn to be less secretive! We all know that these things are really innocent; _why_ do they keep hiding them?” Nuh-uh. They are successful only because they have been secretive. They’ve learned well the lesson of a lifetime of doing what they do: Admit nothing, ever. Just keep denying, and your supporters will keep supporting. Hillary Clinton remains the favorite for president of the United States. Ay, no one trusts a single word she says? Even so. If they had told the truth about a single thing, they’d be long gone long since.
MikeR,
Yes. Hillary still appears favored to
runwin. I think that’s the more likely outcome. But she still could do things that blow it for her. If she is ill as she says, pretending to be healthier than she is and then collapsing again, is a way to lose it.Lots of polls come out at the beginning of the week, so we’ll see if anything has really changed this week and next week.
Just saw Trump’s campaign manager on Bill Maher. I was as amazed there as I am here at Eli’s comments. Trump is a liar – heh? Maher had a number of examples; one was that Trump kinda-sorta favored the Iraq War on a talk show, “Uh, I guess so…”, and now he says he didn’t!
Yeah, we get it, Trump says whatever.
But wow, when the other candidate is Clinton, to bring that issue? :O I would have liked to see this response:
“Donald Trump telling lies? Are you serious, Bill? Are you actually comparing Trump’s ‘Uh, I guess so’ about the Iraq War with Hillary Clinton’s _solid year_ of lying about her emails, smiling and with a straight face, over and over, shifting ground over and over as new facts came out showing that her last set of statements were lies? ‘We had permission.’ ‘We turned over all our emails, except a few about my daughter’s wedding.’ ‘We were careful to follow all the rules for classified information.’ ‘We were fully cooperative with the investigation.’ ‘We never destroyed any information.’ ‘Nothing was classified.’ ‘Nothing was classified at the time.’ My gosh – studio audience! You’re all liberal, right? How many of _you_ don’t trust a single word that Hillary Clinton says?
Bill – where in the world have you been?”
There are a lot of bitter Bernie Sanders supporters out there – use that.
Good thing Eli wasn’t there, though.
MikeR, the black vote will likely not effect Trump’s campaign result. The reason is you are looking at about 10% of voters, so even a 10% improvement would only change things by 2%. Sure Romney could have maybe won barely with 19% of the black vote, but Trump would need to do as well as Romney with other groups, and right now he is not doing well with large groups of white voters.
That said, Trump is doing what you are recommending.
I think the #1 thing Trump needs to do is counter the Rubio attack, “If you hadn’t inherited one hundred million dollars from your father, you’d be selling watches in Manhattan.” A good counter at the time would have been, “You’d be buying ’em”, but for present purposes, he needs voters to know his business routine, particularly that he wakes up early. It contrasts with Hillary’s unfitness, and highlights that Trump is a responsible person.
“the black vote will likely not effect Trump’s campaign result.” I just don’t agree. A Democrat can’t be elected dogcatcher in America without the black vote. And there is no reason that a large chunk of them (even more than 10%) shouldn’t vote for him: they are not the ones that have a problem with what he is saying. It’s just that they hear racist, racist, racist. He must go to them and tell them that they’re being used, they’ve been used by the Democratic Party since I was a kid, and it isn’t working for them. They have black Democratic mayors in major cities. They have a black president. None of it has helped their community one bit. Black people are getting killed, and arrested, by black policemen just as much as by white policemen. What they’ve been doing isn’t helping. Pick any issue: quality of schools is ten times more important to them than whatever the Democrats are saying is important.
“How many of you in this audience believe that it would be hard to get a picture ID, for a single person you know? If you know someone like that, send them to my campaign; I personally guarantee that we’ll get you one. So why are the Democrats talking about that issue like it would hurt you? Because they want your vote and don’t care about what the black community actually needs. Black Lives Matter – How many of you want the war between police and every human being in the inner city? Nobody. How many of you want the police unable to do their jobs? Nobody. We have to find ways to solve these problems that really work, not just point to names for problems that haven’t changed for fifty years.”
I think he could turn the community, and heaven knows they need it.
If your think Trump could win 95% of the black vote, then yes it would change things substantially. I don’t think any of his advisers are thinking that is a possibility, and even Trump only says it will happen in his reelection.
A more realistic goal is 20%, and even that would not take many states away from Democrats. It would merely lower the margins and make more states competitive.
You can’t overcome double digit margins with 9% of the vote.
I guess I don’t understand your numbers. Why in the world would you think he needs 95% of the black vote?
Maybe you’re right, but please explain.
He doesn’t need 95%. You said ‘turn the community’ suggesting you are looking for a flip like with FDR’s election. I used 95 because Trump said it.
Admittedly, I started by posting that 19% would not have won the election for Romney, then the numbers weren’t quite as solid.
Just looking at 2012 numbers, here are the percentages of the black vote, Romney needed to flip states, assuming turnout stays the same(not likely).
Florida 8% Ohio 13% Virginia 16% Pennsylvania 26%, Nevada 39%, Wisconsin 56%
Colorado, New Hampshire, Iowa, impossible.
Looks like I messed up, and in fact 19% would not have won for Romney.
Now, the black voter turnout also increased, and this increase under Obama did flip the election.
In lots of states, even 95% of the black vote wouldn’t win for Republicans.
Lucia, Your suggestions for Hillary are superb. It could be that she doesn’t get this kind of advice because her staff knows she won’t take it, or she doesn’t have staff as sharp as you.
My take on the current situation is that Trump won’t win the election, she’ll lose it. She’s so good at doing dumb political things, like insulting 20% of the electorate, and then adjusting the number she intended to insult. If i wasn’t convinced that Trump should not ever be president and electing her (yuck) was the only way yo prevent it, I’d be out there directing performances of Les Deplorables.
Maybe we’ll all luck out and her physical problems (if they are really serious) will be revealed to DNC leadership and they will convince her to suspend her efforts for the benefit of the nation. I think this could also happen if it looks like she’s certain to lose. Whether or not she is afflicted with something serious, she’ll say she is, cannot in good faith go on, and Joe Biden will fill in.
And as for all the crap about how she is the best qualified candidate for president in recent times, Joe has her beat by time in the senate and 8 years as VP. And, besides, he really can be funny. Certainly not great presidential material, but better.
Finally, there are a lot of pretty bright people who comment here. I’m a bit surprised how many of them seem to accept the possibility of a Trump presidency. Maybe I can’t read.
Trump is deplorable #1 for Bill Maher and Rachel Maddow and many more. Why? Because he is tough and downright insulting to anyone who attacks him. If you didn’t catch it that’s a circular proposition. He would be hated for purely his net worth. That’s not something America was known for prior to the progressive social justice movement, which includes success as an ill.
.
The reason Trump has appeal to non-college graduate white males over 30 is that these are the only group that has escaped indoctrination by university campuses and is a bit tired of the center of accusations of being anti-women, anti-ethnic minority, anti-immigrant and you name it. Nobody’s perfect, but they don’t see themselves as white scum.
.
I don’t like that Trump made personal attacks against Carly, Rand, Ben, Marko and Ted, which the MSM and social media lapped up. John Kasich says he will not be voting for Trump or Hillary. The freek-n governor of Ohio is not voting for the president! Imagine that.
.
Both in climate science and in politics the liberals may be less than honest (with good hearts) but they sure are much better team players than conservatives (or libertarians).
j ferguson,
I have a very low tolerance for political corruption, and that is what the Clintons are always involved in. Maybe it is because I have seen what pervasive political corruption has done to Brazil…. the corrupt politicians suck the life out of the productive economy. I have often thought the Clintons would be perfectly at home in Brazil, save for their lack of Portuguese. More than anything else, I want the Clintons’ corruption to have negative consequences for them personally. Losing the election and being finished politically would be a fitting negative consequence.
.
I am not very worried about Trump. He knows so little that he will be forced to surround himself with experienced hands. This has already started happening during the campaign. Will Trump ever be a good president? HeII no! I just think his many flaws are less important than corruption.
SteveF, Trump is unscripted and that leads to gaffs. I believe he is no worse than any other politician but he doesn’t calibrate every word using poll focus groups. In a way that’s refreshing. Teddy Roosevelt called people nasty names too.
“I’m a bit surprised how many of them seem to accept the possibility of a Trump presidency.” William F Buckley said that he would rather be ruled by the first thousand names in the Boston phone book, than the faculty of Harvard. He meant it.
I would rather have an incompetent president who with a Republican Congress will do some of the things that need doing, than a thoroughly corrupt and experienced one who will keep the country rolling off a cliff.
MikeN, your numbers are interesting, but I’m not sure what your object is. How much black vote is needed so that Trump wins every single state? Don’t care about that. It looks like a close election right now. Move some decent percentage of black voters, and the swing states will swing.
Trump. I worry about his attention span, the inevitable decisions which will require his participation, the likelihood that he won’t understand the ramifications, the even greater likelihood that he will be manipulated by his version of Sydney Blumenthal. SteveF, I’ll give you your concern about tolerating Clinton corruption as i suppose my recommendation would require. I hate it too, but I don’t see the other as preferable. I can’t come up with another recent president as corrupt as she except maybe LBJ. His corruption wasn’t where the problem was, at least to my mind.
Ron Graf, I find the idea that uneducated white males might have a better grasp of the situation because they haven’t been indoctrinated by the liberal education system, if that’s a good way to paraphrase what you’ve written, utter nonsense.
Supposing that a Trump presidency would be involve knowledgeable staff is to ignore his statement that he never hires people smarter than he. Nuts. just plain nuts.
Education & Trump: A lot of the trends pertaining to educated people favoring Clinton are related to female and male voting patterns. In mid-July college educated white men favored Trump by about 5 points. I expect that it is greater now. See http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/14/opinion/campaign-stops/college-men-for-trump.html
JD
MikeR, I suspect we are in agreement. I just had the numbers and realized I was wrong.
I am only arguing against the idea that Deroy Murdock posted a few months ago:
If Republicans get 20% of the black vote it is curtains for the Democratic Party.
You wrote Democrats couldn’t be elected dogcatcher.
Doing a little better, and eventually getting to 20% or more is something Republicans should be trying, but I don’t think it will decimate the other side.
One thing I think they should be doing is spending 200K in their 50 weakest(minority) districts every two years supporting a candidate who promotes the GOP.
JFerguson, I just sat thru a primary where the pundit declared favorite said he didn’t want Putin fighting ISIS in Syria, emergency plan B candidate Chris Christie declared that he would shoot down Russian planes in Syria, and the best polling Republican who was supposedly the moderate and reasonable fellow agreeing with all of this. \
Hillary is also calling for a no-fly zone in Syria.
Meanwhile Donald Trump for all his bluster is talking about getting along with other countries, and is the least hawkish person other than Rand Paul(and Bernie).
As risky as he supposedly is, he appears to be the least risky of the two.
Combine that with no evidence of recklessness in his business career, and I just don’t see the danger of President Trump.
MikeN:
You’ve still not offered any explantion or description of how. I find it difficult to understand how it could be true given “Jesuit” added absolutely no relevant information. That would be why I specifically asked you how it did, a question you chose not to answer.
You might be less surprised if you’d bother to actually read what I’ve written on this page.* I’ve specifically said I do not think lucia intended to use bigoted language. Sometimes people use bigoted language without intending to.
*Yes, I know, crazy idea. Actually reading what people write before responding to it. Who would do such a thing.
lucia:
All of those convey a specific religious connotation, meaning they are only relevant if you are referring to casuistry used by members of that group. Otherwise, there is nothing unique about any of them. You can say otherwise, but your vague claims something exists combined with:
Just means that since nobody will ever be able to point to any useful informatoin conveyed by your decision to include the word “Jesuit,” we’ll be forever stuck with nothing but your vague word that such information exists. I obviously cannot prove such information doesn’t exist as proving a negative is impossible, but anyone familiar with the terminology or willing to spend a little time looking at how the phrase is used will realize your claim has no support.
But hey, we’ve already established you insist any “:ineffective apology” must inherently not be an “apology” at all and won’t discuss it beyond repeating yourself and saying, “Google it.” I’d say it’s clear who is relying on “protestant causuitry.” Because that’s clearly what you’re using. Mind you, that’s not the “Jesuit casuitry” you accuse me of using. They’re very different things.
/eyeroll
Simple Brandon. Casuistry by itself, I would have to guess from context, and there are many possibilities. Jesuit casuistry means something about reasoning.
Cnn reports
http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/19/us/new-york-explosion-investigation/
I think few will be surprised if the NY and NJ bombings were connected. The two locations are geographically close.
j ferguson,
Trump is too quick to talk, and says stupid things, of course. That may work on ‘reality tv’, but it leads to gaffs in politics. That is not how he has made business decisions. We can’t be certain if he thinks his current campaign staff is smarter than him, but it sure is a lot more experienced:
https://ballotpedia.org/Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign_key_staff_and_advisors,_2016
Maybe Trump could announce prospective top staff and cabinet appointments between now and November, as he has done for Supreme Court candidates.
SteveF
Which is a bad habit in a president. That said, being too slow to talk is also a bad thing. We have candidates who are on opposite sides of optimum.
I think both will be horrible for international relations. Trump will impulsively say stooooooopid things that will interfere with various discussions. Very stooooopid things. He won’t apologize, and he’ll put even leaders who he might be able to charm later on in the difficult position of having to explain too much to their people should they want to enter an agreement with Trump.
Meanwhile, Hillary will not be trusted. Sorry… but as much as her supporters may want to insist that things are all cleared up &etc and that she is really, really trustworthy and so on, international leaders will be familiar with sagas like “travelgate” and on and on and on. And they won’t trust that what she or those working under her now are saying is “the” story. Because more often than not, it won’t be. So no one will want to be bound by an agreement they suspect is somehow … something else.
Lucia,
What a surprising development. Even more surprising the ‘terror cell’ should turn out to be a group by Islamic extremists. Of course, we must never say that Islam is in any way connected to violent extremism, nor that Islam has anything to do with stoning women, throwing homosexuals from rooftops, or beheadings of apostates, christians, etc. That would be very non-PC. Times like these call for joining hands in a big circle for a rousing rendition of Kumbaya.
CNN edits out Clinton’s “bombings” response to NY, NJ explosions at the same time Jake Tapper tosses HRC a softball to wallup Trump for using the term “bombs” before an investigation to had time to determine it. This is reminiscent of Romney being fried by the media for calling Benghazi an attack before there was time for the “fog of war” to clear.
.
ABC transcript:
.
CNN video:
They seem to be finding more bombs around. I’m glad I don’t need to walk the sidewalks of NY today! Yeah, the risk at any given location is low.
But then, I’m a coward. The cat brought in a rabbi Friday night and I was sort of gingerly walking around worried the noise might be something…. else.
(When I did find the rabbit– who was entirely unharmed but terrified, I got a towel, draped it over it and put it outside. It hopped away.)
Ron Graf
For that matter, I don’t even know what this is supposed to mean:
I have no idea what one does to “support” a “first responder” in this instance. Obviously, the police are going to go out and do their job. Possibly those who happen to see something can report it. Some did report bombs and that’s how they have been found.
But other than that– I have no idea what “supporting” them means.
Lucia:”cat brought in a rabbi”
What an ecumenical house you run.
Jferguson,
I’m now imagining a rabbi being dragged in through the cat door…..
Darn you, jferguson, I was about to make a similar comment. It was appropriate that the cat brought in the rabbi on Friday night. Presumably Lucia fed him challah and wine.
Not sure whether these 5 will turn out to be connected.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3795912/Five-arrested-hunt-Manhattan-bombers-Suspected-terrorists-seized-FBI-hunts-men-seen-video-planting-IEDs-duffel-bag-filled-pressure-cookers-bombs.html
Cameras everywhere these days:
Pretty heavy.
I have no idea why de Blasio was saying yesterday that they didn’t know the motive but there were no links to international terrorism and no links with NY/NJ bombings. The semantic dance of these “intentional acts” with “explosive devices” 3 times in neighboring cities on public streets that isn’t to be named terrorism is the kind of thing that makes people want to vote for Trump.
It was such a confusing statement that even the NYT called him out for dissonance and mixed signals. You get the feeling that they were actively hoping it was domestic terrorists, the thought processes are baffling to me.
I know what they want to do is not spread panic, but sometimes panic is warranted. People should be looking in garbage cans for bombs. When they spread obvious PC platitudes they lose credibility which is exactly what is needed to prevent panic.
David Young wrote: “Trump is unscripted and that leads to gaffs. I believe he is no worse than any other politician but he doesn’t calibrate every word using poll focus groups. In a way that’s refreshing.”
I largely agree, but I’d prefer more respect for the truth.
MikeR wrote: “I would rather have an incompetent president who with a Republican Congress will do some of the things that need doing, than a thoroughly corrupt and experienced one who will keep the country rolling off a cliff.”
Replace “incompetent” with “inexperienced” and I agree completely. An incompetent president would only work if there is a Congress that will actually do its job.
j ferguson wrote: “Trump. I worry about his attention span, … the likelihood that he won’t understand the ramifications, the even greater likelihood that he will be manipulated … I find the idea that uneducated white males might have a better grasp of the situation … utter nonsense.
Trump’s attention span is not a problem. It was sufficient to build a business empire and run a presidential campaign. Understanding ramifications is why a president has expert advisers and not being manipulated by those advisers is dependent on the same skills needed to run a business empire. The relatively uneducated may well have a better grasp of what is important.
SteveF wrote: “Trump is too quick to talk, and says stupid things”
But he has demonstrated that he can control that as needed, which suggests that it is at least partly strategy rather than an inherent aspect of his character.
Lucia wrote: “I think both will be horrible for international relations. Trump will impulsively say stooooooopid things that will interfere with various discussions.”
Trump has made hundreds of complex business deals. I have yet to see any stories of his blowing deals by saying stupid things. So it seems that he can control his impulsiveness at will.
The other observation is how much they are underplaying the “heroic armed citizen (off duty officer) takes down raving ISIS terrorist in mall attack saving many lives”.
I have no particular allegiance to the second amendment but this is the perfect storm for gun rights advocates and it deserves to be celebrated by people other than Fox News. This guy is a legitimate hero.
Suspect in custody according to Fox News.
Tom Schraf
I still don’t know if we have evidence of links to international terrorism. This guy lives in the US.
But it would likely be wiser and more accurate for someone like DeBlasio to say that this only just happened, and investigations have been initiated. Obviously, they aren’t going to have evidence of much of anything the moment a bomb goes off.
I suspect that at the time DeBlasio said what he said, their knowledge as mostly limited to (a) an explosion went off, (b) it looked like it was above ground — and near a dumspter (c) no public utility (e.g. the gas company) was reporting some catastrophic failure. So, what they pointed to pointed to “bomb”.
Why he couldn’t say he didn’t know and he wasn’t going to speculate about motives of connections…. I don’t know.
Personally, I think most people should stay the heck away from garbage dumpsters to what extent they can. But if they do approach one, they should have their eyes open.
Lucia,
I think we agree. He should just say “links between the bombings and international terrorism are possibilities and are being actively investigated”. When he said no evidence of links he could just as easily have said there is no evidence there aren’t links either. In summary there was no evidence. The answer “I don’t know” is perfectly acceptable and politicians shouldn’t be afraid to use it. They seem wedded to image projection which I suppose is always their first impulse.
There is evidence, the guy is originally from Afghanistan and has an Arabic name and apparently burned his computer in his backyard a few days ago which is the new ISIS playbook. This isn’t conclusive evidence but it sure starts tipping the scales one direction where most people betting money are going to select international links. It’s different than absence of evidence today. It could go completely sideways from here of course.
Both Trump and Hillary are about the same age as Reagan was when he became President. He was legendary for taking naps during the day and for not being totally attentive to detail. It didn’t seem to do him any harm. So why are age and health such big issues now? In a broad sense, I don’t really understand why anybody on the verge of becoming 70 would want to have such a job as President. Is the USA turning into a gerontocracy such as the USSR at the time of Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko and co?
Graeme,
People discussed Reagan’s age before the election too. I don’t know see why the rule that people can and will discuss age of candidates should change now.
Tom,
The Tsarnaev’s didn’t really have any international links. The operation was pretty much two brothers.
Being an immigrant, having an arabic name and so on doesn’t really create “links”.
There may turn out to be links. Of this guy (and possibly group) may turn out entirely homegrown. We don’t know yet. That said: the larger the group, the more likely there will be ‘links’ and if so, likely “international”.
Tom Scharf,
Good luck with that. This sort of thing has happened before. In my neck of the woods, in 2002 a shooter at the Appalachian School of Law was restrained by two students who were off duty police officers with guns they retrieved from their cars after they heard the first shots and a third unarmed student. Of the many reports of the incident in the press, only two mentioned that any of the students confronting the shooter were armed.
There was some question as to whether the shooter had any ammunition left at the time, though, and exactly when he put down his gun.
lucia,
I don’t think you need actual correspondence between, say, ISIS operatives and the bomber. Being inspired by the material on the web would be a sufficient link for me.
Re: Ron Graf (Comment #150819)
As Glenn Thrush said
But to reiterate, Trump lied in his statement that Hillary started it and apparently the whole issue is overblown, we should move on, give the votes etc.
Trump:
This is actually sort of funny (assuming it’s true.)
https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20160919/chelsea/thieves-helped-crack-chelsea-bombing-case-sources-say
They were lucky the didn’t explod themselves!
But wait, there’s more. This seems to be a different set of guys:
Clearly, just leaving luggage and backpacks around isn’t going to be an effective strategy for blowing up NY or NY. (I think I read another bomb was found buy some dumpster divers. But I’d have to find that story.)
WSJ
http://www.wsj.com/articles/police-seek-man-in-new-york-bombing-probe-1474286549
I know being a nincompoop isn’t really as bad a being a terrorist. But… this guy probably isn’t going to turn out to be “trained”.
* He used a phone that could be connected to his family. Even a tv-terrorist would get some sort of burner.
* He left a fingerprints. I mean… hasn’t he heard of gloves?
* He got himself recorded on film. So, didn’t have a crack squad of people scoping stuff out.
* The NJ bomb clearly didn’t go off when it “should” have gone off. (Before the race? Come on…)
I’m waiting to learn whether he had any sort of escape plan.
DeWitt,
Ok. I think we are using “link” differently. When I hear “links” in a crime, I generally think other people or groups were actively involved. I don’t think of “the person acting alone was ‘inspired by’.”
I agree it’s not unlikely he will turn out to be ‘inspired by’ a group. In this case likely ISIS. Those who blow up things tend to end up ‘inspired by’ something or other. (Though not always.)
Was the “unibomber” inspired by anyone? My recollection is he really was a lone nutter. Thats’ not generally the case.
Lucia (#150938): “The NJ bomb clearly didn’t go off when it “should†have gone off. (Before the race? Come on…)”
Given that a timer was used (as opposed to, say, a phone detonator), this doesn’t seem to have been a mistake on the part of the bomber, merely good fortune. From CNN:
>I’m supposed to buy that Sid Blumenthal whispering birther shit — & HRC NOT acting on it
This makes no sense. Sid Blumenthal’s saying it IS HRC’s acting on it.
The media is busy declaring there is no evidence for what Trump says, when other reporters are declaring that Sid said it. That is evidence.
Sid’s denials are meaningless since he has already lied to the media, lied to Congress under oath, and lied to the public about what a grand jury asked him.
HaroldW,
Ahh.. I didn’t know that. So fair enough.
Given all the other bombs, possibly he was off to another site laying another bomb and so used the timer.
My theory is still currently that he’s more a mope than genius. The suspect is in custody, so we’ll learn more.
MikeN,
Agreed. Their saying no evidence is a bit much. That some of her staff did a few things (and then got fired) and that Blumenthal seems to have maybe done something is “evidence”. It’s scant and plausibly “very scant”.
It’s sort of stupid for supporters to say “no” because that tends to cause more literal minded to point out it’s not “no”. But I think it is very scant. Beyond that, this birtherism really wasn’t any sort of “thing” with her campaign.
In contrast, Donald Trump took the Birther crown, placed it on his head and was the King of the Birthers. I mean…. “Trump=Birther; Trump=Birther; Trump=Birther”. He was a birther. Big time.
Well, let’s just say the questions about Blumenthal’s supposed role come not just from the left .
Fact remains that Trump nurtured and elevated the birtherism because he was playing to the racist tendencies of many of his current supporters.
Lucia wrote: “I still don’t know if we have evidence of links to international terrorism.”
But the odds are good. Trump placed his bet early. If he’s right, he looks like he tells it like it is, unlike wishful thinking lefties like DeBlasio. If he’s wrong, people will see it as no big deal since it was, after all, the logical conclusion.
Such a strategy would be a lot less effective if DeBlasio just adopted a wait-and-see position rather than trying to minimize the possibility that it was terrorism.
Sid Blumenthal’s son has some history in the takedown of right-wing birthers in 2009.
Trump’s being a birther doesn’t change Sid’s role.
The history we have is Sid was spreading a story in 1998 that Monica Lewinsky was a stalker to journalists. Christopher Hitchens(and his wife) was the only one to file an affidavit that Sid lied about this to Congress a year later. He was talking to them because his actions were serious enough they prompted Lindsey Graham to elevate him to one of just three witnesses they were allowed to present.
Sid was a primary point man in pushing Clinton talking points to the press.
Now, he is accused of doing the same with the birther story, and again just one(or is it two) journalist is revealing his role.
It’s not clear if they actually fired a staffer for spreading birtherism. I think they are talking about a Mark Penn memo which says ‘lack of American roots.’ That is different as it refers to growing up in Indonesia, and even Hawaii. Another surrogate said, “Bill Clinton’s been with more black women than Obama.”
As an aside, I thought I was following the birther stuff pretty closely, I knew about Orly for example, but I didn’t know of Trump’s involvement until this year.
Thanks – I will ignore what you have to say about this from now on.
Lucia: “I think both will be horrible for international relations. Trump will impulsively say stooooooopid things that will interfere with various discussions.â€
.
I recently caught a documentary of the insides of the Camp David peace agreement that Carter accomplished. Sadat and Begin were at each other’s throats, lobbing terrible insults and practically being restrained from brawling. The agreement came by Carter not letting the parties leave and then making a personal appeal to Begin to compromise and give Egypt the Sinai. The men were genuinely hugging in the photo-ops, (and not faking). This is how negotiations often go. The art of the deal is not to start with your final offer or let the other side know you need the deal. Sure it’s obvious but one has to be pull it off.
.
If Trump’s latch onto the birther deal was racist why did he give Ted Cruz the same hard time? Because, Trump uses whatever he can use. But, unlike a bully, Trump attacks the strong, not the weak.
lucia,
I agree that the Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber was a lone nutter, as was, as far as we know, Charles Whitman, the Texas Tower shooter. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the Oklahoma City bombers, were domestic terrorists. The bombing was inspired by The Turner Diaries as well as the Ruby Ridge and Waco incidents.
Because Trump is racist against Canadians. How many properties have they let him build there?
Right, like Katy Tur
BTW, let’s not forget an important difference with Cruz – he actually was born in Canada.
RB, even if Obama were born in Kenya, he would still not be ineligible. His mother was an American citizen. The only small issue is that for a short period of time citizenship was not automatically granted to children of young mothers when they were born abroad. That is not the current rule.
The birtherism was preying on wishful thinking from Obama opponents.
Katy Tur is your example? I thought that link would be to someone else. A reporter from a family of reporters, covering some of the most famous events in history.
Looks like Mark Penn is separate from the ‘rogue staffer’ who was fired.
MikeN
I sure knew. He was a mega-birther.
Lucia,
The 2011 white house correspondent’s dinner is sometimes speculated to be the catalyst for Trump running, apparently feeling humiliated by jokes at his expense.
Birther-ism got discussed here in the past because we do periodically discuss politics and it came up in comments from time to time. I googled to find “Trump” mentioned:
Here you’ll fine Zeke, Curious Canuck, kim, SteveF, me, George Tobin mentioning Trump in context of birther back in 2011:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/birth-certificate/#comment-74869
You will see in comment there some of the vistors to this blog has notions about ‘natural citizenship’ and the writings of a guy named de Vatel.
But the fact is: Trump was widely identified with birtherism back in 2011.
I’m not saying Trump wasn’t involved. I’m just shocked as to how I missed it. By 2011, I was aware that Obama’s mom was in Seattle within weeks of giving birth, and read lots of analyses of how his birth certificate was faked, as well as a picture of him with his grandparents. Also saw the arguments that his real father was Frank Davis.
The only things I knew about Trump and Obama were his appearance at the dinner, talking about running for President, and declaring that he was going to drop a bombshell about Obama. It was thought that he was talking about divorce rumors- Romney camp got him to drop it.
Then again, I was also commenting in that thread here, so maybe I just forgot.
RB, those jokes are tame compared to a Comedy Central roast he did about the same time.
However in the context of that dinner, it seemed over the top to just go after him like that. Seth Meyers might as well be a court jester.
MIkeN,
That you forgot merely shows that people forget. The fact is: Trump was a birther. Big. Time. He wasn’t the only birther– a pack existed. But Trump was one. He was vocal.
I was wondering about details about how Rahami was located and arrested:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/suspect-york-jersey-bombings-custody/story?id=42190095
Good thing the bar owner had the good sense to call the police and not try to deal with the guy himself!
This reporters question is amazing. She is basically inviting Clinton to speculate that the bombers motivation was to get people to vote for Donald Trump:
https://twitter.com/CNBCnow/status/777878189171290112
The correct answer should be “What an amazing question!” (That said: I doubt any politician would have done anything other answer in a way the thought helped them most.)
Good one. This may arguably be even better.
RB,
Yep! That said, it’s the sort of thing I expect from Sean Hannity. I don’t know who the CNBC reporter was.
Actually though: I think the CNBC one is more amazing. Because Hannity’s long run up describing Hillary’s ill health is at least “news”. (Mind you- Hannity certainly put it all in a very spun way when using it as a preface to his question.)
But the idea that the bombers motive in bombing was to get Trump elected (or possibly Putin somehow was involved in the bombing and so on….) that’s nothing close to “reporting”.
But definitely both ‘reporters’ sure what to get their opinions in. From now on, I’m going to be curious about what the question was before hearing the answer.
She said “Jennifer”. It would be odd if it was the Fox News reporter but who knows, it might be the post-Ailes period.
I wouldn’t expect a Fox News reporter to have asked a question with that slant. Still…. maybe so.
RB,
I think @CNBCNow’s Jennifer Lee seems more likely:
https://twitter.com/leejenniferlee6/status/746091580919062530
The video was on @CNBC’s page and a tweet with Lee appears just before the tweet with Hilary:
“Moments away: @HillaryClinton to hold press conference in White Plains. Watch live on CNBC & http://CNBC.com ”
https://twitter.com/CNBCnow/status/777868938130681856
RB, Lucia,
Yup, for sure the crazy Islamists all support Trump. That’s the only reason why they try to kill innocent people. If we can just bring ourselves to vote Hillary into office, then the terrorist acts will surely stop. Same thing in France. The terrorists in France really like Trump… a lot. Everything bad on Earth, you see, is the primarily the fault of Trump. Mr. Obama’s idiotic foreign policy, with help from Hillary, has absolutely nothing to do with terrorism.
It seems Hillary’s been saying Jihadists are praying for Trump to win. This is from Sept 9.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/us/politics/hillary-clinton-israel.html
Hillary’s saying it may be a counter-move i.e., when Trump warns about terror and there is a terrorist incident it reinforces what he said and favors him (GOP = good for defense). On the other hand, Hillary saying what she did could be a narrative to counter this, in the event of such an incident.
RB,
That might be the toned down version someone who wants to claim her rhetoric is sane might prefer. But NYTimes says she says the terrorists are praying for this outcome.
Just because she keeps her voice down and talks s_l_o_w_ly– like a school teacher addressing naughty kindergartners –doesn’t mean her rhetoric doesn’t sometimes get just as goofy as Trump’s.
Lucia,
It’s all bs, but I imagine they wargame these situations in the campaign.
BTW: She used “basket of deplorables” in her interview in Israel: See around minute 2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqUW4ZeJssA
I’m watching to hear precisely what she said about Isis Praying for Trump. Jim’s just home so I probably won’t list to the rest until tomorrow.)
Oh Carrick, how’s that, i.e. Muslims are praying for a Trump victory, for confabulation on HRC’s part? As far as I can tell, that’s no different than Trump claiming Muslims in the US were celebrating on 9/11/2000, which, btw, was something of a meme at the time. I guess she’s senile too. /sarc
DeWitt,
She didn’t say she saw them praying. 🙂
The key part of the interview about ISIS supporting Trum seems to start just before minute 17. She says rooting. I don’t hear ‘praying’– but she has a “psuedo quote” in which they are asking Allah to make Trump president. So…. your call whether she says they are “praying”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqUW4ZeJssA
Even Trump was unhappy with Sean Hannity’s questions about health and avoided answering.
Trump saying the same about Hillary. It’s a free for all.
Wow. This blog is much better than our news services over here. Reading it this morning is like watching an event unfold in near real time. Thanks all.
First presidential debate next week. Lester Holt moderator.
Topics announced:
I don’t think this guy will be referred to as “masterminding” anything. Another loser looking for an easy route to infamy. He didn’t even die in the process, he got absolutely nothing right.
Tom Sharf,
Wild eyed fanatics of all stripes tend to have a comon trait: stupidity. Even appies to wild eyed global warming fanatics. 😉
Trump had a plant , just in case, but it looks like this seed may not come to fruition.
Lucia,
“She didn’t say she saw them praying.”
.
No, it is more dilusional… she imagines or devines that they are praying. She is derranged.
RB,
Islamist terrorists don’t have to come from outside the country where they carry out terrorist acts…. but in western countries, they usually do.
I doubt either candidate has any degree of dementia. Occams razor and background priors; they are both … prone to take excessive liberties with the truth. I think that’s all it is.
Tom,
The bomber is alive. I’m sure both campaigns are hoping he gets interviewed and tells the world he’s for the other side.
angech,
This is the up and coming story
http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/296680-house-panel-probes-web-rumor-on-clinton-emails
It broke before the bomber was arrested. But the story on Reddit was diffuse. A few people started picking it up. It’s the next news cycle. What happens after, I can’t predict.
Statement of Minnesota stabber’s family: ““As a family, we are committed to fully cooperating, within the limits of the law, with all the relevant law enforcement agencies as they conduct their investigation.” http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2016/09/19/family-st-cloud-mall-suspect-was-picking-up-iphone/
Going the extra mile to cooperate within the “limits of the law.”
JD
JD,
It seems the family disclosed his name
It looks like they are cooperating.
Lucia,
There is a reason why the technicians would invoke the fifth. There is no reason why Commey would not have recommended inditement against one or both.
.
The effort to strip ‘undesired’ addresses from email headers is perfectly consistent with the rest of the story….. when Clinton’s lawyers learned that damning emails were not yet erased, they most likely instructed the technician to bleachbit them all, and claim the fifth if questioned. If the FBI were doing its job, they would be looking at the technician’s financial records for unusual activity.
.
Plausible deniability is never nearly as good as honesty, but as in other cases, it may be good enough for Hillary to escape culpability.
SteveF,
Sure.
The reason the Reddit story will be the next news cycle is that if legit, it looks like traceable evidence of ‘intent’ because the IT guy is explaining that he was asked to scrub the email addresses from the emails w/o deleting and was looking for a way to do it. Later, when he failed, he deleted.
There will be questioning to find out who asked etc. There may turn out to be more stuff archived at archive.is. They guys on reddit appear to be doing detective work.
Whether they find anything or not, this is going to be discussed the next few days. So… more discussion of email coming to the top of the news cycle pile.
Michael Mann is staying politically active:
http://www.ecowatch.com/michael-mann-climate-deniers-2009591213.html
.
Which administration, Trump’s or Clinton’s would be more transparent and less corrupt? Real question.
Michael Mann is staying politically active:
http://www.ecowatch.com/michael-mann-climate-deniers-2009591213.html
SteveF,
If they’re really serious, they grant immunity to the low level guys. Then they can be guilty of contempt of court or Congress if they still won’t answer questions, depending on who gave them immunity. If it’s Congress, though, don’t hold your breath waiting for the Justice Department to act on a Congressional contempt citation. That’s already happened with Lois Lerner over the IRS targeting scandal and AG Eric Holder for withholding information about the gunrunning thing.
DeWitt, these guys were already given immunity.
What was the purpose of trying to edit the e-mails?
It can’t be to hide the activities of the Clinton Foundation, or to hide any of their records.
Something about the story isn’t adding up.
‘I need to strip out a VERY VIP email address’: Did Hillary’s IT guy ask for tips on deleting evidence?
Headline in a minor news story in Australia right now.
Will let you know if it grows.
Newscorp in Australia and ABC [Australia] pump out anti Trump stories morning noon and night. Nice to see a bit of balance.
The establishment is running very scared.
Which should make him very scared I guess.
********* 1 point 2 years ago
Advice to stonetear
“Just because you have the messages available in multiple formats and locations doesn’t change that it’s an attribute of the envelope not meant to be rewritten. The functionality is just not built into any tool I know of. Having that functionality would create the ability to screw with discovery (I mean, there could be mitigation with versioning, but that would need other configuration)
As for your existing messages, if the current users absolutely cannot see the existing messages, you’ll need to do a search and export and just forcibly remove the messages from their mailboxes. It’s not clean and not advised by me, but if they don’t want VIPs address out there it will need to be removed.”
“-If the FBI were doing its job,
-If it’s Congress, though, don’t hold your breath waiting for the Justice Department to act on a Congressional contempt citation.”
“Combetta, who was granted an immunity deal from the Justice Department, told the FBI he initially forgot the request but later wiped the emails from the server using special software in March 2015 after having an “oh s***†moment.”
Some serious prescience going on here.
Mike N,
If an addressee can be stripped from the email header, then there is no proof that addressee ever received the email message. Quite convenient if you are stating (or have already stated, oh say, to the FBI) that you were just unaware of something. If the technical question of how to do that can be traced to Combetta, then it suggests he was asked to strip names…. it surely is not a normal IT activity.
.
Of course, there is no way Congress can actually investigate, since Combetta has already refused to testify (5th amendment claim against self-incrimination), and the other guy refused to even show up. The Justice Department would never pursue a Congressional contempt citation, of course, unless Hillary loses the election. But then it wouldn’t really matter much, since most people already know Hillary has a great deal of trouble with the truth. If Combetta was instructed by Clinton’s lawyers to destroy emails already requested by Congress, then that looks like criminal conspiracy, and those folks ought to spend some time in prison. They won’t. Some people are above the requirement to follow the law.
SteveF –
Assuming that the reddit questioner is in fact Combetta, I’m left wondering whether the email address he was interested in scrubbing was another “unofficial” (that is, not .gov) address. Not necessarily Hillary’s, either.
HaroldW,
Yep. The thing is, he previously plead the 5th.
That was before this story appeared on Reddit. If the story on Reditt holds water (and I don’t know if it will) and it is Combetta (and it sort of looks like it is) then the 5th might no longer help him. So that might change how he feels vis-a-vis the immunity that has been offered him.
Here is a great opportunity for those who were a little late on the cat and the rabbi. You know who you are.
I can’t believe that you can scrub the principal or even most of the addressees in an outbound without it being obvious. I have to think some more about the inbounds, but…
My suspicion is that someone didn’t want anyone to know how much of her correspondence was copied to Sidney Blumenthal, or maybe the tooth fairy, or maybe “Dear Diary” or God forbid, Rasputin. The Clinton Foundation?
Or maybe her yoga circuit or the wedding planners.
Or maybe H had just realized that a cloth alone wouldn’t get the job done and was flailing for other means.
so the opportunity here is to guess whose addresses needed scrubbing.
lucia,
If they’re serious, Combetta doesn’t have a choice. The immunity is granted whether he wants it or not. Then he can no longer use the Fifth Amendment as an excuse to not answer questions.
But I still doubt that they’re serious. They’ll put on some sort of dog and pony show to make it look like they’re doing something, sort of like the FBI investigation of HRC’s email server, but they won’t take any action.
We’re on an automobile circumnavigation of the contiguous states so I get to read-up here and then munch on what I’ve read for the 8 or 10 hours of driving, then hit the IPAs and concede loss of pith for the evening – sparing all of you.
But on voting for Trump. Think voting for George III.
I’ve been unable to find the quotation, but some French writer observed around 1920 that France had been without competent administration (he meant competent politicians) for about 80 years from time of Napoleon to 1914. I suspect we’re into such a period in this country and wonder if we start next year or the 80 years commenced with Clinton 1. I don’t happen to think he was incompetent, but I may be alone on that one.
Back to Trump. I agree that he’s said some things – maybe more than a few – which had heretofore gone unremarked and with which I agree. The best was ” ‘He kept us safe’ is bs.” I thought it was nonsense at the time, since it was pretty clear that 9/11 happened on George’s watch.
There is something like the million monkeys on a million typewriters (million keyboards for you youngsters) to Trump’s utterances. Many of them are so stupid, they’re not worth considering, but more than infrequently they are spot on.
If only they could get this guy an editor.
Does anyone on earth give HRC the benefit of the doubt on the email fiasco except maybe her paid staff?
Recently when they exposed that they had an “oh sh**” moment when they…ahem…forget to delete her email archive and did it after a discovery request came in, I couldn’t believe the press didn’t have a field day with it.
If the truth could really be known I would probably bet there was blatant illegal activity with 1:10 odds. The reddit story is probably true and they won’t be able to prove someone from the Clinton team instructed him to do it. Even if he said they did the Clinton smear team would probably show he voted Republican once in a local race and therefore it is another huge right wing conspiracy. This won’t move the race an inch without a smoking gun, and even then probably not because most people already assume she is guilty.
jferguson,
The incompetence of the French politicians didn’t stop in 1914. But maybe that’s when the comment was made. The treaty of Versailles was a disaster and pretty much guaranteed that there would be a WWII.
Tom,
Why would we give her the benefit of the doubt? She’s never given us that courtesy. Over the years she could have been open about what she’d got caught doing, with an explanation more or less the truth, not a series of things tossed at the wall hoping something would stick.
It’s probably no longer pertinent, but Lucia is so good at suggestions on what she mighty have said, that it would be interesting to compile a list of explanations for every single one of H’s plights just to see if closer approximations to the truth might not have been political suicide.
In probably the most unsurprising result ever recorded:
Americans’ Trust in Mass Media Sinks to New Low
http://www.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-media-sinks-new-low.aspx?g_source=Politics&g_medium=newsfeed&g_campaign=tiles
Republican trust now at 14% as the media hive mind openly discusses being more hypercritical of Trump to protect the rubes from themselves.
j ferguson,
There is an element of foxes guarding the hen house here. The Obama administration will not enforce contempt of Congress violations, so Congress and the public are powerless to do anything. Reading the FBI report, I found myself saying ‘Wait, why aren’t they recommending prosecution for obstruction?’ They aren’t because the administration WILL NOT, prosecute, and they know that. Hillary gets away with it again.
SteveF,
Wouldn’t you think that a contempt citation from Congress would require action by Justice?
J Ferguson,
Two earlier ones were ignored, the more damning being Lois Lerner, were the contempt was plain: she simply refused to cooperate. Everything about the Lerner case stinks….. thousands of emails disappear…. with hard drives crashing and disappearing, like WWII kamikaze planes in the Pacific. The current administration will not allow Congress to investigate politically motivated misdeeds. It is symptomatic of the ideological divide which has grown ever wider over the past 30 years…. enforcing laws has become secondary to achieving desired policy outcomes. Naked power trumps all else. I am honestly concerned about the future of American democracy.
Even NYTs readers are getting sick of the excuses for immigration and terrorism. The highest ranking comments oppose the NYTs editorial in favor of current immigration system and essentially say we should take care of ourselves first.
One highly rated commenter, Justice Holmes stated: “Second as usual the authors are more concerned about those who don’t live in their cities than those who do. Don’t citizens of a country and residents of a city have any right to call upon their leaders to consider their needs!”
Randy L, the highest rated commenter stated: “Fix our country, take care of its people, first. Then, and only then, will we be in a position to help others without hurting ourselves.” See http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/20/opinion/our-immigrants-our-strength.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0
Because I think that Islamic attacks are predictable in the US and will help Trump (and we can expect worse attacks before election day), I would say right now that Trump probably has a 55% chance of winning. If New Yorkers are sick of the pollyannish support of wide open borders, the feeling will be stronger in the rest of the country.
JD
jf, no. Under the law, the US Attorney is required to take it to a grand jury. However, Congress has been ignored in the past. Under Bill Clinton, two Cabinet members were found in contempt of court for the first time since the Civil War. Four years ago, Eric Holder was the first Cabinet member ever declared in contempt of Congress. No action was taken. Lois Lerner was also found in contempt.
There is a Capitol jail that can be used, but no one is going to go down that road. It was last used in the 1930s, and requires the House to hold its own trial.
The Senate operates through civil action in the courts, and the Obama Administration would not be able to block.
“ Skittles are candy, refugees are people.”
SteveF wrote: “I am honestly concerned about the future of American democracy.”
Me too.
Trump is not some sort of political idiot savant. He is a smart pitchman skillfully playing a role to sell his product. The real danger of electing Trump is not that he will be incompetent or start WWIII by insulting Putin or some such, but that he might be a con man planning a massive bait-and-switch. That worries me.
But the far left is a bigger danger. We KNOW they are up to no good and that Hillary won’t stand up to them, even if she does not fully agree with them.
Elect Hillary and we stay on the same misguided path that we have been on for at least the last two administrations. Anger will build until there is either an explosion, or the left gets its opportunity to openly repress its opponents. Either way, that does not end well.
Trump represents an opportunity (I hope) to lance the boil before it is too late.
Interesting article about Trump’s big ideas:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/donald-trump-ideas-2016-214244
The essence is:
“If you listen closely to Trump, you’ll hear a direct repudiation of the system of globalization and identity politics that has defined the world order since the Cold War. There are, in fact, six specific ideas that he has either blurted out or thinly buried in his rhetoric: (1) borders matter; (2) immigration policy matters; (3) national interests, not so-called universal interests, matter; (4) entrepreneurship matters; (5) decentralization matters; (6) PC speech—without which identity politics is inconceivable—must be repudiated.”
The basic problem with Clinton is that if she is elected, she is so corrupt and dishonest that if something really bad happened (Say No. Korea drops a nuclear bomb on Alaska), we will never really know what happened. Clinton will lie about it and all the people working under her will lie because nobody honest could survive working for Clinton. This is why I have to hold my nose and vote for Trump. Under Clinton the federal government will become an unreliable cesspool of dishonesty and corruption. The most basic tasks of the government will be compromised.
JD
It’s Bernie Madoff v Claire Underwood; one threat is for real.
“first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy”
I’m curious how many media people highlighted this statement by Joe Biden?
Since this is an open thread, I thought I should let people know there’s a new paper by John Cook and Stephan Lewandowsky (and a third person I’m not familiar with). I wrote a bit about it here:
http://www.hi-izuru.org/wp_blog/2016/09/a-new-consensus-paper-at-first-blush/
But I highly recommend reading the paper yourself. It’s worth examining just to see how bad of “science” can get published.
JD Ohio: if something really bad happened […], we will never really know what happened. Clinton will lie about it […]
You mean like TWA Flight 800, with Bill Clinton?
Bernie Trump: Stealing your money for a good cause
Thanks Brandon.
RB,
The skittles thing is just weird. That Trump Jr. kid should be put in a tower like Rapunzel or something. Hope he doesn’t get out.
Lucia: Yes, it has potential to create some cacophony to dull the Deplorables theme, not quite the same since it came from Jr, but can dilute it a bit.
McClatchy reporter in Kenya says she was told to look into Obama connections, though Sid Blumenthal’s name was never associated with it.
McClatchy is reporting the story, so presumably they would have done an internal investigation to confirm details. They would have noticed if they never sent someone to Kenya to look into it.
They are not a right-wing outfit, having once published under George W Bush, ‘As violence falls in Iraq, cemetery workers feel the pinch.’
Should we blame Sr for his upbringing? Sorry for the rhetorical question, joke alert.
A key difference with “Deplorables” is that Clinton called people whose vote she is trying to win deplorables. Trump Jr. seems to be calling refugeess– mostly outside the country– “skittles”.
This makes ‘deplorables’ a bigger political blunder. Note making a moral argument here– just political. It’s very important for someone to understand: If you are trying to get someone to vote for you, don’t insult them. Just don’t. Not even if you think the insult is just the truth (possibly especially if you think the insult is the truth.)
The skittles thing is also confusing. Skittles are delicious. I prefer Hershey’s kisses, but …. really… skittles are delicious. So he’s calling refugees mostly delicious except for a few bad ones.
And of course, skittles aren’t poisonous. (Well, not unless you are a member of the anti-sugar police. In which case they are all poisoness.)
I don’t really even know how that was supposed to ever “work” because I have no idea what he thought a person seeing it was going to think. My first reaction was… huh? Just huh?
Yes, and if you look at the tweet, the bowl of Skittles looks rather delicious.
I’m confused. It seems that Trump Jr. said:
“If I had a bowl of skittles and I told you just three would kill you, would you take a handful?”
“That’s our Syrian refugee problem.”
That is called an analogy. Skittles are harmless, unless someone poisons a few. And if some skittles have been poisoned, who in their right mind would eat them?
How does that constitute “comparing refugees to skittles”? How is it relevant that skittles are delicious?
Or is it just that Trump makes people’s brains shut down?
I agree RB. The Skittles look delicious. And as we all know, Skittles are delicious.
Mike M.
I know it’s meant as an analogy. But you are going to have to answer these rhetorical questions for me:
What did you think the answers were? (And when answering, please explain whether skittles are an analogy for someone or something, and if so, what. Because I think it’s meant as an analogy for refugees. So yeah, it would comparing– or if you prefer– equating– refugees to skittles.)
It may surprise you (or Trump Jr.) but intending it as an analogy doesn’t mean it gets the message the message-writer meant to get across, across.
Someone might have ‘gotten’ the analogy. But rest assured, my reaction was not “no one would eat those”. It’s how did they get poisoned? And if you know they are poisoned, why haven’t you put them away and reported the problem to Mars?
We actuaully have a real historical analogy to what we should do if a good, useful product is somehow poisoned. It’s called “The Tylenol Murders”. Tylenol is still on the shelf, some people take it all the time. The reason they do is because Tylenol is a good useful product. People still take them– even though, in the past, some were poisoned.
But somehow I doubt if Trump Jr’s “intended” message was that Mars/Wrigley should redesign packaging so everyone could keep on enjoying their delicious skittles. Just the way everyone continues to use Tylenol because it’s a useful product.
Note: In the historic analogy it is totally relevant that Tylenol is a good useful product that people value. Likewise, it is totally relevant that Skittles are delicious. No one would want to sacrifice people’s access to delicious skittles just because some idiot poisoned a few. Not if we can just do something as simple as fix the packaging.
Lucia,
Apples are delicious. People are not apples. So are you baffled by the saying “a few bad apples will spoil the barrel”?
You wrote: “But you are going to have to answer these rhetorical questions for me:”
“if some skittles have been poisoned, who in their right mind would eat them?”
Nobody.
“How does that constitute “comparing refugees to skittlesâ€?”
Not rhetorical. My answer is: It doesn’t.
“How is it relevant that skittles are delicious?”
Not rhetorical. My answer is: It isn’t.
“Or is it just that Trump makes people’s brains shut down?”
Apparently.
You wrote: “No one would want to sacrifice people’s access to delicious skittles just because some idiot poisoned a few. Not if we can just do something as simple as fix the packaging.”
I agree. Let’s call it “extreme vetting”.
MikeM,
I’m not at all baffled. It’s an analogy that compares people to apples. If the apples weren’t compared to people, the analogy wouldn’t mean anything. It would only be saying something about apples– which is not the intention. In the analogy “apples= people”.
The skittles analogy seems to compare “refugees =skittles” in exactly the same way.
Are you suggesting the skittles analogy doesn’t have anything to do with the followon reference to refugees? What are the skittles an analogy for? (Real question.)
Someone’s… anyway. Seriously, please explain why the first one does compare people to apples and the skittles one doesn’t compare skittles to refugees. If that’s what you mean. Or explain… something.
The Tylonol problem wasn’t fixed by “extreme vetting”. Just improved packaging.
Lucia,
I understood the analogy. If 0.2% of immigrants from country XYZ are jihadists, and 99.8% ok, but you can’t tell which are the jihadists, then immigration from XYZ is problematic, as Europeans will, I think, gradually come to appreciate.
Lucia wrote http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/hillary-campaign-advice/#comment-151031: “Trump Jr. seems to be calling refugeess– mostly outside the country– “skittlesâ€.”
and
“The skittles thing is also confusing. Skittles are delicious. I prefer Hershey’s kisses, but …. really… skittles are delicious. So he’s calling refugees mostly delicious except for a few bad ones.”
and
“I don’t really even know how that was supposed to ever “work†because I have no idea what he thought a person seeing it was going to think.”
Then Lucia wrote http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/hillary-campaign-advice/#comment-151036: “I don’t see how anyone is supposed to tell that the skittles analogy doesn’t work the way the apple one we are all familiar with one works.”
I think that means that the skittles analogy is perfectly obvious, which is my position.
So now I am really confused. Does Lucia agree with me or not?
I suppose I contributed to the confusion by writing “How does that constitute comparing refugees to skittles?†when it seems I should have written “What’s wrong with comparing refugees to skittles?” But I thought the first was less likely to offend.
Lucia wrote: “The Tylonol problem wasn’t fixed by “extreme vettingâ€. Just improved packaging.”
And now we are back to excessive literalness.
By the way, the Tylenol problem wasn’t fixed just by improved packaging. It also involved denying people access to Tylenol for a month or two (until the new packaging was introduced) and destroying about $100 million dollars of Tylenol packaged the old way.
So if I want to engage in excessive literalness, Lucia’s analogy implies … Better not go there.
SteveF,
There are two things– the issue of whether the skittles stand for someone (immigrants? Refugees– which is what Trump Jr. mentions in the tweet.)
In your understanding, do the skittles represent immigrants? Because MikeM seems to be suggesting the skittles are not meant to stand for refugees. That’s what’s puzzling me. It certainly seems to me they are meant to be refugees.
As for what Trump Jr. meant to convey– yes I gather that’s what he wants someone to think. He wants someone put together a whole bunch of stuff that’s not in the analogy.
But that wasn’t what I thought. My thought was: The skittles are supposed to be the refugees. (After all: he says refugee immediately afterwards.) But there’s nothing to say we can’t fix the problem that some poisoned ones get in there. Let’s just fix that, and then go ahead and eat skittles. Which are delicious. I don’t see why anyone would give up skittles when there are plenty of other solutions. So, I just don’t see exactly how the analogy was every going to work with a lot of people. The obvious answer is: Let’s fix the packaging.
OK, Lucia. What do you mean by “Let’s fix the packaging”?
It’s the dissonant optics i.e., a beautiful, delicious bowl of brand name America Skittles and a guy who looks like an alt-right neo-Nazi kook saying there are 3 poisoned ones. It may feel jarring at first, but a few days later, anytime refugee comes up, the colorful Skittles bowl is pictured. Trump Sr understands this – that’s why he talks of planeloads of cash, cheering 9/11ers, and it’s not just “Obama had to use the emergency ladder”, it’s the one where the light bulb guy runs up.
MikeN,
Well.. I agree the whole analogy thing gets confusing.
So you agree the refugees are meant to be skittles? (Just to be sure.)
But the thing is: He’s then comparing them to something “delicious”. But if refugees are something delicious, that suggests he thinks we should want to let the “skittles/refugees” in and we should undertake changes to facilitate letting them in– that would be the equivalent of “improving packaging” rather than “banning Tylenol”. And that’s where “delicious matters”.
Do you think “endeavour to find a way to let them in– and do so quickly” is what Trump Jr. meant? (Real question?)
The reason I found the analogy confusing and not sure what he thought the person seeing it was supposed to conclude, is could read it both ways. I suspect he meant “Keep them out”; but my first reaction, “Find a way to let them in! Skittles are delicious!”
But then I thought…. hmmm… probably not what he meant.
Lucia,
I don’t see any meaningful difference between ‘refugees’ and ‘immigrants’; in both cases you have new residents. If a country has a lot of jihadists, and you can’t identify which are jihadists, it doesn’t matter if people from that country arrive as immigrants or refugees.
MikeM,
Don’t know. That’s part of the confusing thing about Trump Jr’s analogy.
But if you want to know what might be the equivalent of “fix the packaging”, depends on how, in the analogy, they supposedly got poisoned. The analogy doesn’t tell us.
Right now, wrt to the ones who grew up here (tsranaevs, minnesota guy, NJ guy) , it’s pretty unlikely they were already poisoned when they got in. They were too young. So figure out how to keep the ones who grew up here to not become “poisoned” as they grow up. (Of course, while we are at it, we need to figure out how to get non-islamic kids who were born here to not get disaffected. That would be nice too.)
This poem though is much more effective.
Lucia wrote: “Do you think “endeavour to find a way to let them in– and do so quickly†is what Trump Jr. meant? (Real question?) ”
No. I think it is obvious that he meant “Don’t let them in until/unless we can find a way to do it safely”.
If one in a thousand skittles were poison, no one would eat them until/unless we could find a way to make sure they are safe.
So how do we make sure it’s safe? I am pretty sure that is harder for refugees than it is for Tylenol or candy.
I have to go. But really, why isn’t the answer just “Maybe not those skittles. So lets go get some other skittles?” Seems to me thats a better answer than “Stop eating skittles”.
If the skittles are refugees, you are still letting in skittle/refugees.
Lucia wrote: “Don’t know. That’s part of the confusing thing about Trump Jr’s analogy.”
Well, it is a simple analogy, not an in depth analysis.
And if you don’t know how to fix the packaging, don’t claim that it is easy.
“Right now, wrt to the ones who grew up here (tsranaevs, minnesota guy, NJ guy) , it’s pretty unlikely they were already poisoned when they got in. They were too young. So figure out how to keep the ones who grew up here to not become “poisoned†as they grow up.”
I don’t know the histories of the two recent guys, but in the cases of the Boston bombers and the Orlando and San Bernardino shooters, the poison may have been imported (parents in first two cases, wife in last, probably along with bad influences in certain mosques). So being careful about who we let in is at least part of the solution, even in those cases.
Even worse, the man who took that picture was a refugee and does not approve of its misuse.
It’s far worse than that. Public opinion polls in Muslim countries show 25% to 60% approval of suicide bombings. Most Americans are too ignorant of Islam to realize it has some really problematic elements. It’s Fascist in its tendencies. White washing that is dishonest.
MikeM
An analogy that could lead to a number of different conclusions some of which contradict each other.
lucia wrote: “An analogy that could lead to a number of different conclusions some of which contradict each other.”
True.
And there are likely in excess of 10 million people in the U.S. smart enough to realize that. The other 300 million, no problem.
Lucia,
If it were possible to carefully check the backgrounds of refugees, that would reduce the risk a lot. But we are not in a position to. Nor are the Europeans, who have a much bigger problem than we do. The real answer is to have a smarter foreign policies that don’t help generate millions of refugees.
David Young,
As punishment for noting widespread support for islamic terrorism in many muslim countries, you must write ‘kumbaya’ on the blackboard 1,000 times, while continuously singing the song.
It’s a numbers game. If the number of Arab immigrants that kill US citizens through terrorism is really low, and they also happen to murder people for normal reasons at rates lower than other immigrants, say from Mexico, then they don’t increase the death rate of Americans. It may also be so low that it is not relevant. It certainly isn’t anywhere near 0.2%.
The flaw in this line of thinking is assuming that black swan events won’t occur and terrorism deaths dependably occur at rates like car accidents do. People fear mass casualty events.
One could also demand zero tolerance which is basically saying since immigrants kill US citizens we don’t want any period.
I’m OK with immigration but think it is reasonable that Islamic immigrants get extra screening for jihadist leanings for the sole reason they are Muslims. If people think that is profiling and therefore bad, then we can agree to disagree.
Successful immigration is about assimilation. Without it the host society can be viewed as a hostile environment. ISIS is counting on igniting these latent hostilities into something meaningful and final. The host’s challenge is not allowing immigration into ethnically isolated enclaves. Public schools historically have been counted on to aid homogenization into greater society.
.
I hate to point out that the goal of ISIS is not that different from that of mobilizing “the base,” whether it be inner city minorities or “the deplorables.” In both cases the object is to use identity politics as a means of creating the unrest, justified by the ends of the party or cause.
“It’s a numbers game. If the number of Arab immigrants that kill US citizens through terrorism is really low,”
It is certainly not just a numbers game, but numbers can help put things in perspective.
According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_the_United_States) perhaps 1% of U.S. residents are Muslims, about 40% of those being caucasians (Arabs, Iranians). 1% of the annual murders would be about 140. In the last year, the San Bernardino and Orlando shooters killed over 60 people. So that is certainly not insignificant. If one averages over the whole 21st century to date, the picture is much worse.
But of course, the denominator is not all Muslims or all Arabs; it is a subset. And a big part of the concern, in addition to heightened fear of mass causalities, is the threat of the numbers going way up. So there is certainly a legitimate concern here.
Combetta wasn’t asking about removing the e-mail address of Mrs. Clinton, but to replace it with a different one. To what purpose?
What is the timeline of these questions?
Were they just trying to hide the clintonemail.com address while still producing e-mails?
From stonetear ‘“Does anyone have experience with something like this, and/or suggestions on how this might be accomplished?‒
If this was truly a Platte River Network person asking, they needed to hire much better staff if they were going to protect state secrets.
It does not matter what the real numbers game is.
We all get to to take off our shoes and belts at the airport regardless (or pay to avoid the inconvenience.
Ron Graf:
On a related note, as much as people might express shock and outrage at it, Clinton’s comments about ISIS “praying” Donald Trump becomes president are apt. Donald Trump and his rhetoric have already been used as a recruiting tool for terrorists. If he becomes president and continues to use this sort of rhetoric (and especially if he carries out some of the policies he’s promised), terrorist recruitment will likely go way up.
The more offensive you are to moderate Islam, the more Islamic people you will make feel disenfranchised or otherwise disvalued. People who feel society or the world have rejected them are more likely to commit acts of violence or terrorism. We’ve seen the same thing with gang violence, where part of what drives inner-city youths to criminal activity has been the contempt of their government. This is why things like “Stop and frisk” are terrible policies. They basically say any minority person* can be treated with suspect and contempt, as a government policy. The hostility this creates helps drive people to crime.
The basic idea is if you treat a person like a criminal, they are more likely to become a criminal. If you treat a person like a terrorist, they are more likely to become a terrorist. That’s also a large part of why you won’t hear people on the left talk about “Islamic terrorists,” with or without the word “radical” in front of it. That reason is they believe there is such a stereotype of Islamic people being terrorists, that phrasing will be perceived by many people as not simply expressing factual information.
Gang violence has shown us how you try to address a problem can in fact make the problem worse. This can create a viscous cycle where people use the results of their policies as proof the policies need to be stricter, which would in fact exacerbate the problem… which will then be used as proof the policies need to be even stricter.
By the way, policies like “stop and frisk” help encourage situations like we’ve seen in Baltimore, where institutionalized racism and illegal activity by police is the norm. It is not unreasonable to worry analogous situations could arise from policies ostensibly targeted at “radicals.”
Brandon,
The prediction about Trump’s effect on ISIS is pretty untestable. ISIS was way up during the past 8 years while Obama is president. So I should hardly think the prediction ISIS will be way up if Trump become president is meaningful. It’s way up under someone who acts nothing like Trump. If it ends up way up under Trump, that will tell us nothing about cause and effect.
Beyond that, wrt to your comemnt earlier at Twitter, it is ridiculous for reporters to invite Clinton to engage in baseless speculate that the bomber’s motives were to get Trump elected. That’s one bomber– Trump was slammed for even identifying the above ground explosion everyone heard and for which there was plenty of information as a bomb. But somehow, reporters encourage Clinton into baseless speculation about the interior contents of a persons mind. And no one seems to criticize the reporter for extending that invitation. That’s amazing.
Hypothetically, what do you think the voters’ response would be if ISIS actually came out and said it was praying for Trump to become President? Would they be believed?
Brandon spouts nonsense, as usual. Nobody is going to blow up themselves, or others, because of things Trump says. To claim that is to cast Trump as a magical bogeyman with superpowers.
The trite bit of pop psychology, “if you treat a person like a criminal …” is just that: pop psychology not based on evidence. Go to any airport. You will find long lines of middle-class white people being treated like terrorists. How many of them become terrorists?
HaroldW,
Even if one believes ISIS as some group is praying for Trump, I don’t see how that would tell us anything about whose methods of dealign with ISIS will actually be more likely to rid us of them.
The theory for why some ISIS people want Trump seems to emmanate from a guy named matt olsen who cites Mara Revkin and Ahmad Mhidi
Who tell us among outher things that one of the reasons they want Trump is they want a battle:
In their story line, the caliphate reforms after this battle, so they win. But there really is no reason to believe they would win or that this attack their view of religion fortells is more likely under Trump or that it will ‘help’ them.
But presumably, those who think this want the attack in order to achieve the foretold outcome.
That may be why some want Trump to be elected. But it doesn’t mean that his election — or even such a battle–will result in their “winning” this foretold battle.
In anycase, they seem to have been doing just fine expanding in the past 8 years. There’s no particular reason to believe they won’t expand under Hillary just as they have under Obama.
“Donald Trump and his rhetoric have already been used as a recruiting tool for terrorists.”
I am trying to find a way to show how misguided this statement is using Skittles, but since Skittles is now a prohibited speech code I wouldn’t want to get fired from my job.
It may very well be that terrorists have uttered the Trump name. Those of course would be the terrorists who are members of the largest most vile organization in recent history who have attacked the western world repeatedly. These guys tend to call 911 to profess loyalty to this organization while they are shooting dead dozens of people. This organization has come to be under the exclusive reign of the Obama administration. One could compare where we are now to where we were when Obama took office for some evidence based thinking. One could make a plausible argument that a policy of appeasement and retreat has been tried for 8 years and has been…ummmm…ineffective.
One could also still utter platitudes counter to the evidence that being more aggressive on terrorism would make it even worse. When Obama took office and implemented a change from cowboy diplomacy this was not the result the left was expecting. ISIS isn’t a fan of cosmopolitanism and Trump vs Clinton is going to have exactly zero effect on their thinking. What one could surmise is doubling down on passivism may result in more of the same and there are times when a scourge needs to be purged from the system and peace, love, and understanding won’t get it done. Some people think that scourge is ISIS and others think it is Trump. The difference is actual problems versus imagined problems. Remember how Brexit was professed to be the end of times?
The Obama plan has its merits. Trying to force the Middle East to deal with its own dysfunction is a good long term plan. If it works. That plan had risks and it has obviously gone badly to a certain extent. Bush tried forced democracy and Obama tried abandonment. 0 for 2. My view is the Middle East has been 60 years of continuous dysfunction and we need to do our best to keep it inside its walls but stop trying to fix it. If a fix is available its going to have to come from inside, not outside.
Brandon, what incites people is perceived illegitimacy of action — if a response is not called for by the reality of a situation. For example, the federal government outlawed the sale of alcoholic beverages in the 1920s due to the perceived majority who agreed alcohol consumption was a societal ill. What they miscalculated was that the majority of people also agreed (even if they didn’t know it themselves) was that it was not a greater ill than having federal law enforcement mandate that citizen behavior. That question of legitimacy bore a social rebellion. (I won’t get into the pot issue.)
.
The point here is that 9/11 created a legitimacy for airport frisking. A city becoming a “murder capital” might legitimize “stop and frisk.” Being afraid to offend murderers is not a question of legitimacy but of fear vs. resolve…unless you are like 24-60% of the Muslims who think terrorism has some legitimacy.
“the bomber’s motives were to get Trump elected”
This is truly delusional. Delusional with a capital D. One only needs to read his ramblings in his journal which he had on him when captured to get the best insight into his thinking. These aren’t obsessions with Trump America vs. Clinton America vs. Obama America. It’s with America et. al. What is vastly entertaining is how the media is now “searching for a motive” for his bombings. They can carry around journals, leaves notes at the scene, or call it in to 911 screaming the motive and our 4th estate is incapable of ferreting out the truth. Yep, must be Trump. The Onion analogy is overplayed but this has become a parody.
Tom Scharf,
What’s magical about 1956? The Arab world was dysfunctional long before that. See T.E.Lawrence Seven Pillars of Wisdom, for example.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ahmad-rahami-new-york-new-jersey-elizabeth-chelsea-bomber-journal-death-oppression-attack-al-qaeda-a7319861.html
I wonder when he ignited a blast in the back yard. You’ve gotta wonder how that didn’t get some attention.
FWIW: WSJ reports Rahami’s dad complained sone was a terrorist 2 years ago. But no one has any evidence, so that file was closed.
Lucia,
Thanks for the link to that interesting article about ISIS’s view of the Presidential election (in #151065).
“I am only arguing against the idea that Deroy Murdock posted a few months ago:
If Republicans get 20% of the black vote it is curtains for the Democratic Party.
You wrote Democrats couldn’t be elected dogcatcher.
Doing a little better, and eventually getting to 20% or more is something Republicans should be trying, but I don’t think it will decimate the other side.”
MikeN, they are already decimated. In state and local government and in the House of Representatives, Democrats have lost enormous numbers of seats in the last eight years. Their current stronghold is the presidents and (their hope) to regain the Senate. Otherwise they are decimated.
[The amazing thing is that they are so close to attaining many of their goals in spite of this. With just the presidency and a couple more Supreme Court Justices, they will cement policy in place that would take a generation to undo, if it could be done at all. That’s amazing, and that’s why I support Trump even though he was below dead last on my list of Republican candidates.]
But Democrats are fond of saying that demographics are on their side. In their minds, every minority member is a born Democrat. If that changes in direction, it’ll be hard to see what they do next.
Isn’t it the nature of Dabiq that everyone is killed? Maybe no different from Armageddon
lucia wrote: “Prosecutors said Rahami bought bomb ingredients on eBay … WSJ reports Rahami’s dad complained sone was a terrorist 2 years ago. But no one has any evidence, so that file was closed.”
So once again, the FBI screws up and misses what they should have seen. Either they are incompetent, or are blindfolded by political correctness.
Question: If elected, will Clinton change that?
jferguson,
I think “everyone” (meaning almost everyone) dies. But… possibly like Gotterdamerung, there are survivors.
After the battle in Dabiq a new age will dawn.
(http://www.news.com.au/world/the-apocalyptic-prophecy-behind-islamic-states-death-cult/news-story/e28d3e633341c2db7f7c1e8d3f957f2b)
I’m looking for a version that had some people version with details on their view of what this new age will be like.
These apocayiptic predictions always have versions of interpreation.
Sorry for all the typos. I usually have lots. But opening all these news articles with their videos, javascript and so on often interferes with Firefox. Causing freezing, halting and so on. The rate of typos is skyrocketing.
MikeM,
To be fair: He could have bought all this stuff after the FBI investigated.
Some of the stuff is really innocuous. Citric acid is sold by Ball (maker of the jars) and used to make pickles; it’s also in “Fruit Fresh” which I have in my cupboard. Lots of people buy Christmas lights; I own some. I probably have an old Breadboard somewhere. I don’t think I have any “item for fireworks firing system”, but who knows. I guess it depends what that turns out to be.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2016/hillary-campaign-advice/#comment-151076
jferguson,
Here’s a version where the muslims win at Dabiq:
http://www.breitbart.com/jerusalem/2015/12/13/inside-islamic-states-end-times-apocalyptic-battle-plan/
There seem to be versions where Jesus returns and ends up ruling.
Anyway: ISIS certainly does want a battle. That by itself tells us little about the best strategy for eliminating them as a power in the region.
Hi Lucia,
Thanks for looking into this.
lucia,
Citric acid is used in the synthesis of hexamethylene triperoxide diamine, a powerful and easily detonated explosive. The basic components, hexamine (easily produced from formaldehyde and ammonia) and hydrogen peroxide are fairly stable. Citric acid is a catalyst. That’s the reason for the limits on liquid container size in carry-on luggage. There are YouTube videos of explosions.
lucia,
I’m beginning to really hate Firefox. It’s a memory hog by itself and combined with Flash, will freeze in a heartbeat. I don’t understand why they haven’t fixed what appears to be a massive memory leak. Either that or it doesn’t clean up after itself well. It’s been going on for some time. The next time you get a freeze, open Task Manager, which you’ll probably have to do anyway to close the program, and look at how much memory is being allocated to Firefox. I’ve seen as much as 1GB.
lucia wrote: “To be fair: He could have bought all this stuff after the FBI investigated.”
I assume that to be the case. Unless they decided that Rahami’s dad’s complaint was groundless, as opposed to insufficient to press charges, they should have been keeping an eye on the guy.
It seems that in most of these attacks, including 9/11, it turns out that the terrorists were hiding in plain view. OK, so hindsight is always 20/20. The troubling thing is that I see no evidence that the FBI learns from these events, or even wants to learn from them.
lucia wrote: “ISIS certainly does want a battle. That by itself tells us little about the best strategy for eliminating them as a power in the region.”
It tells us a lot. Give them their battle and destroy them. That not only removes the immediate problem, it also undermines the sick idea driving the problem.
DeWitt, get FlashBlock add-on for Firefox.
MikeR, you are actually reinforcing my point. Republicans made all these gains despite doing worse among black voters. The 20% number would not change much. Democrats would still be winning easily in California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, New Mexico, Connecticut, and many more places. It maybe could make competitive Pennsylvania and Illinois.
According to the wiki entry on eschatology, among the signs muslims look for to predict the end of the world is:
“When the most wicked member of a tribe becomes its ruler, and the most worthless member of a community becomes its leader, and a man is respected through fear of the evil he may do, and leadership is given to people who are unworthy of it, expect the Day of Judgment.”
As with all such predictions, they can easily be interpreted to represent “now” whenever “now” is. (I’ve got a book discussing how the Revelations of St John actually refer not to Satan etc but to Nero.)
Mind you, elsewhere in the wiki article it says to expect the sun to rise in the west.
lucia:
If by “untestable” you mean we can’t actually test what effect something has because we can’t try both with and without Trump being elected, that’s certainly true. Similarly, if you wish to know whether or not ISIS “was way up” because one person was president rather than another, that is also untestable.
But that’s not what was going on here. It is quite possible to examine what sort of ideas are used to recruit terrorists. They don’t make some great secret of it. You can even find much of it on social media or various websites. You can even find websites where you can talk to people who support ISIS about what makes them like ISIS, though language barriers are often a problem for that. Government officials can also look at reports on what former ISIS members have told them, what sources report people talking about “on the streets” of foreign countries and various other direct sources on messaging.
What all of that shows is Trump’s rhetoric is used by radical groups to recruit people by using Trump to lend credence to the idea the West has and will mistreat them and the things they care about. Trump is a great selling point on the idea there is a war against Islam. If Trump gets elected and continues with the same rhetoric, that selling point will undoubtedly become even stronger.
I don’t understand why people keep comparing these two things. Donald Trump is a presidential candidate who told people bombs had been detonated before there was any confirmation of such. That’s not behavior one wants from a president so he got criticized for it.
This journalist is not a presidential candidate. Her question was a bad one in that there was no way Clinton could have possibly had cause to speculate the terrorist’s motive was such. That’s not remotely the same though. We wouldn’t want to elect a president who would ask people to speculate like this journalist does, but journalists ask bad questions like this all the time. That’s why they’re journalists not presidential candidates.
As far as this particular question goes, the idea anyone could know this was the terrorist’s motivation at this point is ridiculous, but people wondering if it is the motivation is natural. If you a journalist asking after that is amazing, I suggest you pay more attention in the future to what sort of questions journalists ask. You’ll find plenty of ones as bad or even worse than this one.
By the way, if we were comparing candidates instead of candidates to journalists, I’d say there’s no comparison on this issue as Clinton handled the question properly – dismissing it as pure speculation and drawing attention to a real issue.
MikeN:
That would depend on framing, but most likely, it would have little to no effect. At this point in the election, intellectual issues have pretty much been settled. The only thing that will really change people’s mind is the visceral. In that regard, it’d be difficult to get people to care what ISIS said as it is far-removed in their minds.
Now, if a terrorist who carried out a recent attack said that, that would be different. Especially if people could see him say it, in English. That would cause a far more visceral reaction, one which would impact things far more than anything ISIS might say.
What that impact would be, I don’t think anyone could predict. It might create a backlash against Trump, but people might also take it as a sign Trump is on the right path because them hating him means he’s right, or something.
Mike M.:
Perhaps before saying someone “spouts nonsense” you could take the time to actually read what they say. Nobody claimed terrorists would carry out suicide bombings because of what Trump says. There are tons of factors which go into the decision to carry out such an attack, many of which come up only after a person has joined a radical group. If they never join that radical group though, then all those other factors will never come up.
As much as you might like to claim otherwise, it is based on evidence. In fact, it’s a well-known issue for things like family counseling where children’s behavior is reflected in their expectations.
You don’t have to believe it, but pretending societal expectations hammered into people day in and day out is anything like having to go through screening at the airport is both laughable and offensive. Especially since (in theory) such security is applied to all groups equally, meaning nobody is singled out – exactly the opposite of what I described.
Brandon
“Keep”. That’s an interesting word choice.
By “one” you mean “some people”. Sure. And so some people criticized him.
I don’t happen to think his saying the bombing was a bomb was much of a big deal. I don’t think Hillary’s calling it a bombing was a big deal. I don’t think there is any reason why people need to wait for “confirmation” when the information that exists already makes it pretty clear that it was a bombing.
It was a bit much that she called it a bombing and then turned around to criticize him for calling it a bomb. But she probably didn’t really think that through.
Uhhmmm… Newsflash: people can be amazed at the behavior of those who are not candidates for president. In fact: people can criticize people who are not presidents. Including journalists.
That journalists was an amazing question, the journalist chose to ask it. I’ve listened to other questions. But yes, I plan to continue to listen to questions. When I am struck by one that is amazing, I’ll continue to feel free that the qeustin was amazing.
DeWitt,
Yes. Citric acid is a catalyst. It’s also used to make pickles (among other things.) My only point is that the FBI isn’t likely to flag everyone buying citric acid, christmas lights and so on.
Ron Graf:
You seem to have dropped the “perceived” caveat of your previous paragraph. I’m not sure if that was intentional or not. Either way, your comparison is interesting as airport security is a joke right now. As a person who’s profession requires I be interested in security, I might be a bit more harsh than most people, but the reality is if you wanted to sneak the same weapons the the terrorists of September 11th used onto a plane, you could.
The reason you won’t see a repeat of those attacks has nothing to do with airport security. The reason is purely societal. Prior to those attacks, planes had been taken hostage a number of times. Things played out much the same way each time, with the whole purpose being ransom. People on those planes didn’t realize things were different this time. When they realized the purpose of the attack, they showed people who know their plane will be crashed like that won’t sit idly by and allow it to happen. That’s what brought down one of the planes and ensured a repeat will never happen.
The changes to airport security are simply not about optimizing security. They’re about reassuring the public steps were being taken to address a problem. Similarly, stop and frisk was never about fighting crime. If that were the true goal, a policy that could actually accomplish the goal would have been chosen.
Some people may genuinely believe these things are for the stated reason, but if you drill down into the underlying factors that go into the decision making process, “looking for the best solution” never shows up. Or rather, some people will bring it up and be shot down by the various conflicts and compromises that go into policy decision making.
“Being afraid to offend murderers” is an interesting way to put it given the issue I raised centers on people being tarred with unfair expectations. As for the numbers you give, the reality is Muslims aren’t that different from Americans. Why do you think Americans are okay with the fact our country tortured (innocent!) people for no benefit because of fears of terrorism?
It’s because when it comes to a perceived threat to oneself, few actions are found to be too heinous. Yeah, the average American may not say the same things the average Muslim says, but that’s more about appearances and societal influences on expression than any real difference in beliefs.
That all said, the numbers you cite are, at best, highly misleading. Given the United States itself carries out actions that could fairly be considered “terrorism,” telling us X% of any group thinks “terrorism has some legitimacy” tells us basically nothing. Saying terrorism has absolutely no legitimacy would mean condemning even the American Revolution.
lucia:
This is the sort of unproductive response I think indicates there’s no point in further responses. Maybe I’m wrong though.
Okay, fine. I assumed everyone would prefer a President of the United States not go around announcing things as fact when there is no confirmation of what he or she says. Perhaps that was a bad assumption. Perhaps some people would be happy with a president who reports the news before it is news because he wants to be first rather than worry about whether or not what he says is actually true.
Newsflash: Nobody said anything like what you’re arguing against.
Nobody said you cannot find this amazing. People are free to find whatever they want to be amazing. All I said is if you find this question amazing, you should pay more attention to the sorts of questions journalists ask because there are plenty as bad as or worse than this one.
If you do what I suggest, you might find those other questions amazing as well. That’d be fine. Nobody said you couldn’t. Telling us you can do something nobody told you can’t or shouldn’t do is silly.
ISIS using Obama in their recruitment video:
They’ve also used Bill Clinton and David Cameron.
Brandon, even if it has the negative effects you say, stop and frisk reduced crime and saved lives.
Nevertheless I would end it(and a judge I think did so) for the same reason you give.
MikeN,
You wrote: “stop and frisk reduced crime and saved lives”.
But you oppose it since it encourages crime?
Stop, question, and (if justified) frisk is a very valuable public safety tool but is also easily abused. It needs to be properly monitored, not terminated.
Interestingly, Rand Paul has a problem with TSA patdowns but I don’t find anything about “stop and frisk” – maybe he experienced the patdown part himself.
Muslim Opinion Polls — substantial numbers of Muslims support suicide bombings and Sharia law in Western Countries. There are many, many polls cited here, and I don’t claim to have checked out the vast majority of them. However, some of the polls are from liberal organizations, like the Pew Trust. http://thereligionofpeace.com/pages/articles/opinion-polls.aspx
Several results for example: Pew Research (2013): 15% of Muslims in Turkey support suicide bombings (also 11% in Kosovo, 26% in Malaysia and 26% in Bangladesh). The executive summary of the Pew Research stated: “A new Pew Research Center survey of Muslims around the globe finds that most adherents of
the world’s second-largest religion are deeply committed to their faith and want its teachings
to shape not only their personal lives but also their societies and politics. In all but a handful of the 39 countries surveyed, a majority of Muslims say that Islam is the one true faith leading to
eternal life in heaven and that belief in God is necessary to be a moral person. Many also think that their religious leaders should have at least some influence over political matters. And
many express a desire for sharia – traditional Islamic law – to be recognized as the official law of their country.”
…Also, “Pew Research (2013): Only 57% of Muslims worldwide disapprove of al-Qaeda. Only 51% disapprove of the Taliban. 13% support both groups and 1 in 4 refuse to say.”
…
Also, “BBC Radio (2015): 45% of British Muslims agree that clerics preaching violence against the West represent “mainstream Islam”.
….
Pew Research (2014): 47% of Bangladeshi Muslims says suicide bombings and violence are justified to “defend Islam”. 1 in 4 believed the same in Tanzania and Egypt. 1 in 5 Muslims in the ‘moderate’ countries of Turkey and Malaysia.
http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/07/01/concerns-about-islamic-extremism-on-the-rise-in-middle-east/
….
The Polling Company CSP Poll (2015): 19% of Muslim-Americans say that violence is justified in order to make Sharia the law in the United States (66% disagree).
http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/150612-CSP-Polling-Company-Nationwide-Online-Survey-of-Muslims-Topline-Poll-Data.pdf
…
The basic point being that the Muslim religion predisposes people to not being open to assimilation in Western Societies. That being the case, it is prudent to vet Muslim potential immigrants, much more thoroughly than those from more peaceful societies.
JD
Which in fact he did . It’s like the Dick Cheney effect of personal experience.
JD Ohio wrote: “The basic point being that the Muslim religion predisposes people to not being open to assimilation in Western Societies. That being the case, it is prudent to vet Muslim potential immigrants, much more thoroughly than those from more peaceful societies.”
That predisposition is not merely a statistical association that might easily change with time. It is intrinsic to Islam, which is fundamentally hostile to separation of church and state.
Brandon’s posts not his thread are badly flawed. Peoples actions are generally not caused by subtle societal views about them or stereotypes. The real issue is ideological and not psychological. History is replete with murderous ideologies that needed to be contained and discredited. My view is that Islamism is such an evil ideology. It is incompatible with western democracies just as nazism was. Saying this does not cause Islamists to act out their beliefs. Brandon seems to be chanelling the American communists and fascists who excused Hitler and Stalin. In Hitlers case, the line was that the evil treaty of Versailles made him do it. The search for causes of evil in others as due to our own actions is a form of self-loathing. People are ultimately responsible for their own beliefs and actions.
Mike M: “That predisposition is not merely a statistical association that might easily change with time. It is intrinsic to Islam, which is fundamentally hostile to separation of church and state.”
….
I disagree with this statement to the extent that it states that violence is intrinsic to Islam. Christianity has changed greatly since the 15th or 16th century. Remember, for instance, the Spanish Inquisition or the Salem witch trials. People find ways to make their religion pliable over long periods of time. Unfortunately, right now as practiced, Islam, has a distinct proclivity towards violence that is not present in most other religions.
JD
Ohio News: This article describes how white working class people are turning to Trump in Youngstown, Ohio. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/on-a-street-in-ohio-defiant-democrats-flock-to-trump/
….Not surprising to me, because, as I have said, I just don’t think Clinton plays well in Ohio.
….More surprising to me. I drove through a combination University student rental, and locals neighborhood, today (about 1.5 miles). Didn’t see one Clinton sign. Not one. No Trump signs either. However, it does seem to indicate to me that millenials are tuning out Clinton in Ohio.
JD
I haven’t seen many signs of any kind either. Not sure what that means. Maybe it’s early days?
We left Florida late august, drove to new hampshire, then west through chicago to seattle. we saw no hillary bumper stickers northbound on 95, we saw about a dozen Trump stickers – must come with pickup trucks
maybe a dozen lawn signs for trump pence and five or six for Hillary in new hampshire, virtually no bumper stickers for either crossing the country, but a lot of Trump/pence signs along the highways of wyoming, montana, and washington.
Graphically, the Trump Pence lawn signs are pretty elegant, hillary’s are cluttered.
here in seattle there are a few hillary lawn signs, but so far no bumper stickers.
I don’t think too many of the people who will vote for hillary are delighted doing it, certainly nowhere near the number of people who are tickled to vote for Trump.
most of our liberal cohort are voting for hillary because there’s no plausible choice – they can’t stand her either. some of them would have voted for Jeb Bush. And there are democrats, no-not bernie, with whom they would have been much more comfortable.
I don’t think very many people see this, but if you have to have a democratic president, it would be hard to get one who is more republican than hillary – assuming her various proposals from the campaign are forgotten if she makes it.
This is good point. I don’t think I have seen a single sign or bumper sticker for Clinton / whoever she’s running with. Not much for Trump either but a few. I did see someone with an excellent authentic retro Reagan / Bush bumper sticker though. He wins.
JD Ohio,
I was not referring to violence. I referred to separation of church and state. In Islam, the two are united under Sharia law.
I agree with you completely when you wrote: “People find ways to make their religion pliable over long periods of time.” Most Muslims in the west (or at least in the U.S.) accept the laws of the countries in which they live. But not all do. How do we accept one without accepting the other? Not a rhetorical question, but I have no idea of the answer.
Lucia:
Yes, Jesus leads them to victory. Apparently they’d like to troll America into fighting with them.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/
I should have added that they should root for HIllary since Trump is running to the left of Hillary in foreign policy.
Mike M,
The fundamental problem is that many (perhaps most?) Muslims reject the idea that government and religion should be separate things. In that sense, much Muslim thinking is like Christian European thinking of 500+ years ago. It is of course possible that the Muslim faith will evolve to be more tolerant in the very long term, but in many places (eg Turkey) the trend is just the opposite: there are plenty of relatively secular Turks who act like Europeans, but a majority of Turks want to move the country away from secular government and toward Sharia law, with all its restrictions on individual choices. I do not see any overall trend globally toward a more tolerant Islam; the trend is at present the other way. I find it very discouraging.
MikeN:
There is no way to know this to be true, and there are plenty of arguments to say it isn’t true. As a quick primer on the debate over this, I recommend this article. There is a lot more information and detail out there, but it’s a start.
j ferguson:
I heard an argument in which a guy claimed Donald Trump should be running as a Democrat while Hillary Clinton should be running as a Republican. I don’t know that I’d agree with him, but I was surprised to find his argument to be not completely ridiculous.
David Young:
While you may believe Islam is an evil religion comparable to Nazism, I think most people will not agree. Part of it may be a naive hope in people, but part of it is just that I think most people would cringe at the Godwin’s.
I think if you want to compare a person who disagrees with you to fascists and communists, you might want to do something to actually justify that comparison. Otherwise it might look like you’re just lashing out and have nothing sensible to contribute.
That said, I think I’m going to stop posting here. Given the massive amount of obviously false information posted in the last thread, including that sourced from conspiracy nutters, I get the impression discussing what is actually real serves no purpose now. Given the willful ineptness of responses across both this and that thread, I get the impression nobody really cares about understanding why people disagree with them on these issues.
And given the rudeness, hostility and even bigotry displayed here of late, I get the impression people would much prefer people who disagree with them not be here. Maybe I’m wrong in my impressions, but when commenters can compare millions of peace-loving people to Nazis and receive have any backlash, it’s clear to me I shouldn’t stick around.
But hey, I’m just disagreeing with you guys, sometimes on basic factual matters that are easy to verify, because I’m a fascist Nazi-lover who’s trying to help spread the evil ideology of Islam across the world. I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with how you guys are behaving.
Driving home from Willowbrooke, I saw one sign for a presidential candidate. It was for Gary Johnson.
Shollenberger: “And given the rudeness, hostility and even bigotry displayed here of late….”
I should probably just let you walk out the door, but you have said you were leaving before and haven’t done so.
On August 30th at your blog you stated:
“So unless you intend to take me to dinner and a movie, you can get off my dick any time. Feel free to play with yourself or anyone else who comes by though. Some people might be into your twisted sort of nonsense.” http://www.hi-izuru.org/wp_blog/2016/08/if-youre-going-to-be-smug-be-right/#comments
… Slightly later that same day you also stated: “As I’ve said many times, I have no problem with insults. If you’re going to use them though, you should try to be clever or witty about them. Failing that, you should at least be clear and direct with them. That’s how mature people behave.”
….
So, it is clear that you are in no position to complain about rudeness & hostility, particularly when you stated in your first comment to my Clinton health post that: “some people will latch onto any issue no matter how baseless or idiotic.” [your criticism of me even bringing up the topic has clearly proven to be wrong].
….
Hopefully, at some point in time in the future, you will be able to engage in self-reflection and analysis. Currently, you have no such abilities. Almost certainly the rant that will probably follow this comment will deflect from the issues, so you are welcome to have the last word, and I can save on electrons.
JD
SteveF,
It is my understanding that Islam itself rejects the separation of government and religion. Muslims who accept that separation are accommodating their religion to the world around them. It is a different thing from religious tolerance, which is allowed for in Islam, at least with respect to other people of the book.
500 years ago (arguably even 200 years ago), Christianity was possibly less tolerant of other religions than Islam. But the separation of government and religion goes back to the beginning of Christianity (Render unto Caesar …).
Religious minorities have little choice but to be tolerant. But a theological commitment to theocracy creates a fundamental conflict with secular governments, whether Muslims are a majority or a minority.
JD Ohio wrote: “I should probably just let you walk out the door, but you have said you were leaving before and haven’t done so.”
So encourage Brandon to walk by ignoring him.
>But you oppose it since it encourages crime?
Maybe not the exact same reason, but I oppose it because I don’t think people should be treated as criminals.
Saw someone defend it as not incompetent. Don’t remember the specifics, but it was something like the FBI investigates a lot, and it is unreasonable to expect them to catch everyone.
Sounds like a reason to not in even more people, so as to reduce the workload.
Brandon FWIW I am not a huge fan of stop and frisk unless there is a murder epidemic, and then only with proper oversights and joined with other tactics. Giuliani did bring down NTC murder and violent crime rate by 76-80% in 8 years. Also, I agree that air passengers not being counted on to cooperate is the main anti-skyjacking deterrent, although it did not deter the underwear or shoe bomber’s attempts. I disagree that ISIS is caused by western Islamophobia or Christian crusading or deplorables wanting a pause in Syrian refuges. ISIS’s main enemy is Shiite Muslims. Other “non-believers” are 2nd. Their tactic is to attract members the same way street rioters do, by showing they can have an effect, and to provide an avenue to satiate anger (which they do their best to fan).
.
I can remember when the left was enraged that Reagan was talking tough to the Soviet Union, questioning their legitimacy, blasting them via European radio with the Voice of America. Reagan re-started all sorts of Carter cancelled weapons, the B-1, the Pershing II medium range nuke, dense pack nuke silos, Trident sub nukes and finally star wars SDI. The left predicted doom. “This fascist maniac will destroy Earth.” What happened? The Soviets blinked and negotiated the START Treaty and then imploded. The USA economy soared despite huge defense spending, including a 500-ship navy. The only person in the world that did not take note of the US strength was Saddam Hussein.
.
I always bought the story of blame being April Glaspy’s famous quote at the end of her meeting with Saddam:
The actual blame now seems to be Bush the elder’s application of the “Let’s all be freinds” approach to Iraq. From this article:
With belligerent actors history has proven the latter approach to be more effective in keeping peace.
.
I’m printing tickets Trump rally now. I’ll report Sunday how it went.
Ron, aren’t they the same thing? April was working for the President.
If the Muslims here are such that merely stopping the immigration of more Muslims will turn them into angry terrorists, then isn’t that an argument for not letting in more Muslims as they are prone to turning into angry terrorists?
Ron Graf,
Is that April Glasby quote the one which paraphrased something she’d said to Sadam to the effect that the US had no real interest in what the Arabs did and which may have led him to believe that he could invade Kuwait with impunity? If it is, and if it really happened as I think it probably did, it sure could use some more circulation.
thanks for remembering it.
MikeN wrote: “Maybe not the exact same reason, but I oppose it because I don’t think people should be treated as criminals.”
Stop-question-frisk most certainly does not treat people like criminals. It does treat certain people like suspects. If police aren’t allowed to treat anybody like a suspect, then we might as well disband the police.
The way stop-question-frisk is supposed to work is that if the police observe suspicious activity, or have such activity reported to them, they stop the person and ask them about what they are doing. If the response is suspicious, they can decide to frisk the person. Abuses seem to consist of stopping people for no good reason and frisking everyone they stop. Good management practices (lapel cameras,monitoring of statistics, proper followup when issues arise, etc.) should be able to control both.
MikeN wrote: “Saw someone defend it as not incompetent.”
I saw a report that when the FBI investigated, Ramani’s dad recanted. If so, I see nothing wrong with the FBI dropping the investigation completely.
You can’t put people in jail for pre-crime unless you have some really solid conspiracy evidence. This is very easy to overcome with minimal competency by the terrorist so asking the FBI to do this without the aid of pre-cogs is nearly impossible. We are lucky that the jihadis are basically incompetent and can’t even pickup obvious better methods like renting a big truck and running over lots of people. We simply need to absorb these for the most part, but having the FBI on alert is always a good idea to stop the incompetent ones, but we won’t be able to stop a smart one.
The Palestinians stopped their terror bombing eventually, and hopefully the jihadis will too. There are things we can do, namely making efforts to shut down their propaganda machine and removing areas of sanctuary. This doesn’t stop an ideology but makes it harder to spread.
Tom, the Israelis made it harder for Palestinians to come into the country.
So now they have to do things like send their little kid to throw rocks at soldiers hoping to get him killed on video.
http://ibloga.blogspot.com/2016/07/pallywood-palestinian-father-tells.html
MikeM, there has been a tripling of stop and frisk in the 2000s. I think what you are calling abuses has become the default behavior.
>If police aren’t allowed to treat anybody like a suspect, then we might as well disband the police.
> supposed to work is that if the police observe suspicious activity,
This means that someone has become a suspect through their activity. That is different from someone being treated as a potential suspect for walking on the street.
What if someone refuses to answer the police’s questions about what they are doing?
Brandon, have you reviewed the methodology of the paper? I am suspicious of desire to get one result. The choice of time period seems strange, since the crime drop was much bigger before that under Giuliani. The reporter’s suggestion of lead poisoning has the same problem.
MikeN wrote: “there has been a tripling of stop and frisk in the 2000s. I think what you are calling abuses has become the default behavior.”
Well, it is a relatively new tactic, so an increase in use is not in itself evidence of abuse. That said, some of the numbers I’ve seen are indeed suggestive of overuse. Without proper monitoring, stop-question-frisk will surely lead eventually to abuse. That is not an argument against stop-question-frisk, it is an argument for proper monitoring.
“This means that someone has become a suspect through their activity. That is different from someone being treated as a potential suspect for walking on the street.”
Absolutely. The latter is unacceptable. But I have not heard of that as a systematic problem, except for police routinely stopping gang members. I think it wrong to do that just because a cop subjectively decides someone looks like he might be in a gang, but acceptable if there are objective criteria. For example, someone choosing to self-identify as a gang member by wearing gang colors in an area where you don’t do that without the permission of the gang.
“What if someone refuses to answer the police’s questions about what they are doing?”
I’m not a lawyer, but I would that would get you frisked but that otherwise the cops would have to let you go about your business.
Building a wall in Israel did appear to be effective. I watched an Iraq war documentary yesterday that showed US forces building a wall around Sadr City in Baghdad which effectively stopped attacks on the Green Zone.
Wall building can work. Do not confuse this as an endorsement of building a wall around Mexico or Syria. Border enforcement can also be a good enough wall.
Stop and frisk in Chicago would be a very good test case for its effectiveness. I would put it up for a vote community by community. The indignity of being searched needs to be balanced against an out of control firearms (that are discharged frequently) problem. It’s better to do this bottom up instead of top down. If South Chicago doesn’t want it, then they can live with less effective policing.
I’m not sure what some of these crime ridden communities really want the police to do. There isn’t any fairy dust to make policing perfect and the police appear to have pulled back on enforcement resulting in a crime spike. This seems like the wrong direction if I lived there. Nobody talks about why the police don’t trust these communities and what the communities can do to help solve the problem.
Tom
It’s unclear to me what you think they could test. So you want “stop and frisk someone who is merely walking in public”? If so, I think that violates people constitutional rights. These can’t be suspended by community vote. I’m pretty sure SCOTUS has never found a “balance” between allowing people to be stopped with no cause to suspect they are guilty of anything” and there being “out of control firearms” whether or not they are discharged frequently.
Of course police can stop people when they have some reasonable cause for suspecting them. But otherwise, I can assure you that I wouldn’t want a cop stopping and frisking me merely because I was walking down a street that was deemed dangerous.
There’s been a glimmer of hope. Some parents turned their kids in for questioning. See:
http://chicago.suntimes.com/opinion/a-nod-to-parents-who-turned-in-sons-wanted-for-questioning/
I know it’s random of me to walk back over to this dead horse and have a whack at it.
This idea that the people being recruited by ISIS care about Hillary or Trump one way or the other strikes me as absurd.
Excerpt from story here:
The story goes on to talk about children raped and other atrocities. Folks here can pretend all they want to that everybody else everywhere else is just like them, with the same cares and morals and so on. It’s untrue. These people couldn’t possibly care less about the rationalizations the progressives weave around them, or who is running for office in the U.S. Probably the leaders pay attention to such things, but the rank and file; these animals? No. I don’t buy that for a second.
stop & frisk: It seems like there is a misunderstanding here as to what stop & frisk is. There is no stop unless there is a probable cause for an underlying (albeit minor) crime. So, matters that were ignored before — say improper placement of a license plate or loud disorderly conduct, are enforced. During the course of that enforcement, it turns out that on a substantial number of occasions, more serious crimes are unearthed. From all that I understand without looking at it closely now, it greatly reduced crime in NYC about 20 years ago.
JD
JD Ohio,
So it is “stop based on suspicion of minor infraction then frisk”. That is different from just picking someone for no reason at all.
I believe it would reduce crime. I just didn’t know the details of what is meant by the term.
Lucia, I commented without checking it out. The standard is reasonable suspicion, not probable cause and comes from Terry v. Ohio, which is summarized by wikipedia as:
“Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court which held that the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures is not violated when a police officer stops a suspect on the street and frisks him or her without probable cause to arrest, if the police officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime and has a reasonable belief that the person “may be armed and presently dangerous.”
…
“For their own protection, after a person has been stopped, police may perform a quick surface search of the person’s outer clothing for weapons if they have reasonable suspicion that the person stopped is armed. This reasonable suspicion must be based on “specific and articulable facts” and not merely upon an officer’s hunch. This permitted police action has subsequently been referred to in short as a “stop and frisk,” or simply a “Terry frisk”. The Terry standard was later extended to temporary detentions of persons in vehicles, known as traffic stops; see Terry stop for a summary of subsequent jurisprudence.”
… My basic point is that there has to be some suspicion of an underlying, albeit minor, crime. There is a wikipedia article on stop & frisk, which gives the theory and history of it in NYC. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-and-frisk_in_New_York_City
JD
Before, we go overboard with Giuliani, let’s check what the FBI crime statistics tell us nation-wide . Now, if only Rand Paul went through a stop and frisk …
RB,
WaPo ‘fact’ checker is clearly biased. I would need a fifty pound bag of salt to take with that article. The violent crime rate was not declining in NYC before Guiliani took office. NYC was not the only city where policing policies changed to stricter enforcement.
Take a look at crime rates since stop and frisk was more or less banned. In 2015 in NYC, the overall crime rate was down because there were fewer burglaries and stolen cars. However, homicides were up 5.1%, rapes up 6.3% and robberies up 2.1% over 2014.
DeWitt,
The patterns are observable on a national scale and apparently on a worldwide scale with correlation to, as everybody here is aware of, lead poisoning. (Crime rate increase in 2015 must be because of Hillary)
RB,
The correlation between economic growth and crime rate is weak to non-existent. If there were a correlation, how come crime went up every year from between 1955 and 1972 when the US economy was mostly surging? Answer, there is no correlation.
The supposed correlation between lead poisoning and crime is also suspect.
DeWitt,
Who are you arguing with about this?
To some extent the patterns are on a national scale, but they are by no means uniform. Circa 1990, New York City had about 2000 murders a years and Chicago had about 900. Roughly in proportion to population. By the end of the decade, New York and Chicago had about the same number of murders, about 600-700 per year. In recent years, New York had had 300-400 per year, while Chicago had 400 to 500 per year. A factor of two decrease in Chicago, but a factor of six decrease in New York. Most of the decrease in New York is due to better policing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Chicago#Annual_homicide_totals_by_year
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_New_York_City#Murders_by_year
Mike M,
If you accept that there is a national/international pattern, the dominant cause is (likely) something other than NYC’s stop and frisk.
I think RB needs to be introduced to a little thing called logic.
Mike M,
Chicago maintains a fascinating database of the departed, their previous experience with the government, and their history of being guests of the state. It’s well worth reading.
I suggest that a reason Chicago’s reduction in murders trails New York’s might be that the folks who are into shooting each other may no longer be able to afford to live in New York as they still can in Chicago.
There is another metric which I was alerted to in a Penology course I took in 1963 and that was that the level of crime in a community would closely track the number of guys in the 18 to 27 cohort as a percentage of the whole. If there weren’t a lot, things would be relatively peaceful, but if there were it would be rougher. Professor liked to say that eventually some politician would see this, see an oncoming dip in the number of males reaching this age and establish some sort of program which he would then take credit for when crime dropped.
I suspect that analyses of this sort of thing can be found which would show whether or not there is anything to this theory.
The number of collateral deaths in Chicago from gang-banging events is also known. I always thought that the Y should open shooting ranges where these guys might improve their accuracy and possibly increase the rate of decline in their numbers. It might also help if some of the actors they seem to want to emulate would hold their pistols with both hands the better to hit their targets rather than in the bizarre and ineffective way they so often do.
I still don’t understand why Hillary gets so much heat for suggesting that these guys are predators. Once again PC gets in the way of understanding.
j ferguson,
Good points. There are no doubt many factors involved. But I doubt that demographics can produce such large effects. For example, the black population of NYC went from 28.7% in 1990 to 25.5% in 2010.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City#Demographics
What would seem to be need is studies of different cities that adopted broken windows policing at different times, to see if the change in policing policy correlates with a rapid drop in crime. I think I have seen that claimed, but I don’t know how good the data were.
Hi Mike M.
I don’t think it is blacks as a percentage of the whole, but maybe more their economic plight. If there are only well-to-do blacks in Manhattan, no matter what the age break-down it seems unlikely that there would be the sort of violent crime where there are not only well-to-do, but also a lot folks barely getting by.
my direct experience with this stuff is pretty old – late ’60s in chicago working for department of development and Planning. Things have likely changed and maybe my grasp of this wasn’t all that good even when i was involved in it.
Perhaps, NYC may have benefited from the extensive use of Compstat , though crime was already falling prior to its introduction. Plummeting stops before eventually ending stop-and-frisk did not lead to an increase in crime . Leaded gasoline may or may not be a strong factor. If MikeM was less of a Trumper, well, too late for that ..
RB,
is there support for the effect of leaded gasoline on the locals? i think I can vaguely remember that it was discovered that poor kids chewed on peeling paint chips which in the ’60s would have included white paint which was made with lead and would have been found in the places they lived.
that and eating starch.
I sense that not all commenters here are able to feel the inequity of all lives lived in the US. the gift of having had intelligent parents and although frugal an interesting childhood is tough to share.
I got such a kick out of the 6 year old’s letter to Obama about adopting the Syrian kid in the ambulance, teaching him english, making him a brother. But there was a limit. The toys which would be shared were to be his sister’s not his.
No one could fake a letter like that. it was the work of a six year old. What’s wrong with the rest of us?
Do we really think that we personally are at risk from admitting 65,000 Syrian refugees who have, at least, been vetted as well as they could be given the chaos of their situations? I’m willing to take my chances.
Lucia,
It could test whether stop and frisk can lower the murder rate. I was just thinking they would use the same stop and frisk that was used in NYC and since this is controversial have the local district vote it in before it was imposed. It would still have to be unwound from the other influences which usually means anyone can state whatever their prior biases were by using analysis X instead of Y.
I’m no big fan of random searches but I wouldn’t want to live in one of those communities and dodge bullets every day either. My guess is there is a lot of people carrying guns illegally and they might possibly leave them at home more often if the possibility of getting searched was a lot higher.
John Ferguson:
They say that the lead factor is controversial, likely to be a factor but not as significant as claimed, likely to be a factor in the 1990s but not in the 2000s
A separate issue with stop and frisk, it was tripled in the mid 2000s, after the big drop in crime in the previous decade. I find it unlikely that people became more suspicious at that point.
There is no real possibility of a policeman’s use of frisking being challenged on an individual basis. Instead a judge threw out the whole program.
Stop and frisk definitely has a proven disparate impact. Crime reality also has a disparate impact. The existence of disparate impact should not automatically make a system unconstitutional, but it implies it might be.
I could claim the higher ratio of police in other communities is having a disparate impact on me and I want my “fair” amount of police protection. Measuring everything through racial disparities has gotten out of control.
Disparate impact alone is not proof of illegal discrimination. Unfortunately it seems that there are people in power who think it is.
DeWitt,
Disparate impact alone is not unconstitutional. But in certain contexts (employment, housing) it *is* considered to be proof of illegal discrimination. That comes not from the constitution, but from specific federal laws (Civil Rights Act, Fair Housing Act) as interpreted by the Supreme Court. As Tom says, it has gotten out of control. But some people, including a certain presidential candidate, think it has not gone far enough.
Mike M.
Another bad decision by Anthony Kennedy to side with the liberal half of the court. There are restrictions in the decision, but I bet nobody will actually pay attention to them.
IIRC, the 1964 Civil Rights Act specifically banned quotas. It takes a considerable amount of circumlocution and tortured logic to go from that to disparate impact. But the Court is good at that. See for example when a mandate is actually a tax, but not a tax in the Affordable Care Act. Or, when is discrimination not discrimination? It’s when you call it affirmative action instead. Humpty-Dumpty and Marvin the Paranoid Android (HHG2tG) would approve.
Potential Effects of Stop & Frisk: A stupid defense lawyer and radio personality left illegal drugs on the seat of her car, which were observed by the police when they stopped her on an interstate. See http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2016/06/20/radio-personality-appears-in-court-on-drug-charges.html
JD
Clinton’s “famed competence”
“The interviews provide more insight into Clinton’s lack of technical acumen. According to the FBI’s Abedin writeup, she “could not use a computer”; Hanley said Clinton had no idea what her own email password was, and had to rely on aides.” See http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/hillary-clinton-emails-fbi-228607
JD
PJMedia’s Roger Simon:
According to Stephen Colbert anyone who does not support Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a racist. If BLM protesters riot or loot conservatives complain; if they take a knee during the national anthem they are called unpatriotic. Point proven. The logical answer to quell the divide is to elect someone who is sympathetic to riots, looting and lack of patriotism, maybe someone who has low respect for national security and sensitive document handling. I think I know who fits that qualification.
Ron,
You can make a case that all was never well with the F.B.I., especially when Hoover was in charge.
Rex Stout, the creator of the fictional detective Nero Wolfe, was not a fan of the F.B.I. He wrote a story, The Doorbell Rang, where at the end of the story Wolfe leaves Hoover standing on his doorstep because Wolfe refuses to let the man into his house. The agents in the story were all thugs. Hoover isn’t named, IIRC (it’s been a long time since I read it last), but it’s clear who Stout meant.
DeWitt, from by studies the Hoover of the 1920s and 30s was not the same Hoover of by the 1960s. The credo was the same throughout: do not embarrass the bureau. But by the 1960s Hoover saw himself, the bureau and the national interest as all one in the same thing.
.
This natural corruption is why term limits are critical. Experience without honesty and humility can serve us very little.
Brandon
i had to explain to him what Jesuit casuistry was. And explain that it was not catholic per se, but rather long ago they served as Exemplars of a form of causitry. Specificly, arguments that made it ok to lie, ok to murder, and well moral arguments that turned on the meaning of terms.. like “apology”
I have never seen anyone who has a harder time understanding english.. Let me qualify that. brandon is smart. Really smart.
But, its weird that he doesnt get these social things or connotation in language.
he also should have looked up bigoted
I’m going back to sleep.
Emergency room again last night
Mosher,
On the “jesuit” thing.. yeah.
Emergency room? Hope you are ok!
Sort of a disrespectful (I think she is a lowlife, but I would be polite enough to not mention it directly to her), half-funny “interview” with Clinton by a Millennial, Don Rickles type comedian. He ends the spoof/interview asking whether they can get into contact again –pause– by email, and she gives him an icy stare. Doubt that this helped her much. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrkPe-9rM1Q
Sort of gives a millennial perspective on Clinton.
JD
JD Ohio,
Hard to say how that plays to voters.
FWIW: I’m not a big fan of Zack Gilifinakis generally. He must have good stuff out there, but I the little I’ve seen hasn’t tempted me to watch more.
Lucia: “I’m not a big fan of Zack Gilifinakis generally.” Never heard of him until today, when my 15-year-old son showed me the video. He thought it was funny in a way not positive for Clinton.
JD
JD Ohio,
Jim and I tried to watch this disk we got from netflix
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_Date
We were already talking about bagging the movie. Then we got through until the masturbation scene and just decreed it was irredeemable. Maybe it eventually got funny. But really, a comedy should be fun to watch no later than minute 10. Certainly, it needs to be funny before it gets to the gross scene (which is somehow supposed to be funny.)
This just wasn’t. It was just dumb.
Mosher: Arnold Palmer–
Having written, the previous post, I will risk posting something off topic, which you may enjoy while dealing with an illness. I posted a little story about Arnold Palmer that was recommended by the NYTs, here: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/26/sports/golf/arnold-palmer-dies-at-87.html?hp=undefined&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
…
You might enjoy it in the same manner that you enjoyed a previous comment I wrote about golf.
Best wishes & speedy recovery,
JD
Mosher
By the way, that’s where Popsie Wopsie got his undergraduate degree. That’s why he knew so many Jesuit jokes.
JD, I thought that was tougher on Hillary than most of the media has been.
She couldn’t have been happy with it.
Its weird. brandon asked two questions “what is jesuit casuistry”
With the following fork
1) if its not different, then its a useless distinction
2) if its something bad, then she a bigot
I answered both his questions and then he accused me of ignoring the main points of his blog. he asked.. was it bigoted? I said no.
he asked “whats special about jesuit casuistry.. I explained.
And somehow he manages to actively seek to misunderstand typically by over literalizing his readings. Its a disfunction.
For example, he thinks that since the jesuits didnt do anything UNIQUE that the term has no meaning.. That’s just a crazy theory of meaning and distinction.. I think we;ve seen that over an over again.
Also He weirdly assumed she was saying his logic was catholic.His words.. not mine.. he has no conception of how terms change meaning over style and how a term can be broadened..
I dint think he will like this
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/1996/06/jesuitical_vs_talmudic.html
Basically, Jesuit casuistry is like porn, you know it when you see it.. The central issue might be called economy with the truth.
“Mosher,
On the “jesuit†thing.. yeah.
Emergency room? Hope you are ok!”
ya,, too many surgerys this year.. it comes in threes I guess.
obama care sucks
The best thing is I get to watch the most awesome drama.
at hour 10 of about 25 hours
Its a crazy mixture of historical fact ( the founding of goreyo)
and fantasy.
The blend of genre’s really works and gives an interesting rendering of the concept off fate ( big in this culture). basically the time travelling girl know that her lover, the 4th prince, will end up killing his brothers to become king.
Very strange culture.. you have a king who may have 10 wives and dozens of consorts all giving birth to sons, kings marrying to build alliances, and then 14 princes and their mothers all fighting and conspiring to do each other in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDX1OqZ7DQw
Steven Mosher
Of course it’s a nutty interpretation of language. It’s not one accepted by dictionaries or linguists. Never had been because it’s not how people speak.
We can find lots simple examples to show Brandon’s rule does not apply to how we speak. Suppose I go to the store and see “French bread”. I don’t think “Italians, Spaniard and even American’s make bread just like that. That means all sorts of humans make that type of bread. That means the adjective ‘French’ has no meaning when applied to bread. The store should just call it ‘bread’.”
As you, Steve, would (try) to explain to Brandon, “French” used as an exemplar and using it to modify “bread” helps people know what type of break you mean. (Likewise, the French would point out that what American’s call ‘French’ bread is not the only style baked, sold or eaten in France. And as far as I can tell “French Toast” is pretty much American. The adjective “French” is still not “meaningless”.)
WRT to “French” for bread we could point to characteristics one expects if bread “French bread” rather than say “Jewish Rye”
Interestingly, you even explained precisely those features about Brandon’s argument that made it characteristic of what is commonly called (especially by Catholics) “Jesuit Casuistry” rather than “no-adjective casuistry”. But somehow, his response is to think you somehow didn’t answer his question about what information content “Jesuit” conveyed!
The other things: It is so beyond ridiculous that Brandon would complain the term a person used precisely because it’s the term Catholics would use to distinguish one type of casuistry from another is somehow an indication that one is an anti-Catholic bigot.
Popsie-Wopsie, a devout Catholic, would use that term. Monseignor Koenig, a Roman Catholic priest would use that term. So would all sorts of people who commonly gathered at my parents dinner table. And of course, the reason I use it is because they used it to describe a specific thing. (BTW: Koenig performed Jim and my marriage ceremony.)
I get that Brandon thinks he’s honed some fine sensibility by studying at some nonCatholic institution of higher learning. But if he thinks that term connotes anti-Catholic bigottry… pftttts….
Returning to a discussion from a week ago.
Lucia wrote: “Right now, wrt to the ones who grew up here (tsranaevs, minnesota guy, NJ guy) , it’s pretty unlikely they were already poisoned when they got in. They were too young. So figure out how to keep the ones who grew up here to not become “poisoned†as they grow up.”
I came across an article from two months ago about Somali refugees in Minnesota that is enlightening with respect to the Minnesota stabber (who came here 20 years ago at age 2):
http://www.wnd.com/2016/07/muslim-refugees-threaten-minnesota-community-with-rape/
Excerpt: “The Somali refugee program has been among the most widely criticized of all refugee programs for the lack of assimilation that the Somalis have exhibited over the past 30 years. At least three-dozen Somali men from Minnesota have been charged since 2007 with trying to leave the U.S. and join overseas terrorist organizations”
Nate Silver’s predictions aren’t always right. But for now, he’s got Trump ahead:
You know… ordinarily I’d rather watch ballet than a presidential debate. And that’s saying something since I’d rather undergo a root canal than watch ballet. It’s close. I’m going to have to watch.
Jim says he’s going to retreat to his “sanctum” and watch something else.
“So figure out how to keep the ones who grew up here to not become ‘poisoned’ as they grow up.”
.
Recognizing and appreciating wisdom, both individual and societal, is one of the cornerstones of conservatism. Improvements are well and good, but look carefully before you leap.
.
This is an example of a thousands of years-old problem that continually gets solved very generation after they discount the previous generation’s wisdom. 19th-20th century America dealt with it by:
1) Free, mandatory public education,
2) curriculum including America’s founding principles, and
3) not overwhelming the system by having immigration quotas.
.
Community schools work when the system stays on the rails. It might be argued inner cities have been off the rails 100 years ago. They can be put back on but busing was not the answer because, like all problems, the solutions have to be sought by setting up a motivating environment. School choice means competition among schools but more importantly competition among applicants.
lucia,
I’ll watch Swan Lake or The Nutcracker any time. But I think it’s mostly the music, particularly The Nutcracker. I always play that and Messiah sometime during Christmas season. But then I like Wagner operas, well mainly the Ring Cycle, too. I think I got hooked on Wagner at a very young age. The overture to The Flying Dutchman was the theme song for Captain Video and his Video Rangers (1949-1955), to which I was addicted.
Ron,
I blame the multiculturism movement for at least some of the assimilation problem. It was a bad idea to start with and has been taken to ridiculous extremes.
I think the current immigration quotas are too restrictive and we should re-institute what was called the bracero program for temporary workers. Sure, at the time, there was exploitation, but that could have been fixed without ending the program.
The idea that you could get US workers to do things like pick crops if you paid them enough is wrong. ‘Enough’ is more than the crops would be worth. IIRC, last year there were crops rotting in the fields with farmers offering $15/hour and no takers. But we need to do something like make English the official language of the US and stop all this idiocy of printing government documents in fifty dozen languages first.
Lucia,
I look at it the same way I look at scrubbing a toilet or cleaning up vomit. Not something to look forward to, but something that just needs to be taken care of when it comes up. 🙂 (I won’t watch live, prior engagement, but I’ll record and watch when time permits)
RB,
RE:150669 I would vote for Trump if I had to vote right now. Let’s see if that changes.
mark, yes, it’s a good exercise to run before viewing the debate – most people think that the debate matters when it does not. FYI, in 538’s now-cast, Trump’s chance of winning just exceeded 50%.
Gary Johnson. The debates are unlikely to change that. I’m not going to waste hard drive space to record them. Besides, watching Hillary makes me ill. And I don’t want to take the chance of damaging my TV by throwing things at it.
DeWitt Payne
I think that’s Jim’s view.
RB,
I think that’s probably generally true. In this case though I’m not so sure. For example, if Sec. Clinton can’t physically make it through the debate or has a continuous coughing fit, I could see that impacting independents. Similarly, if Hillary successfully ‘matadors down’ the Trump bull and provides a spectacular show in doing it, I think it might make a difference.
As always, I could certainly be wrong! Can’t wait to see how it plays out. [Edit: Despite the inherent yuckiness of having to listen to both sides B.S. me and trade barbs all night, I am extremely interested in knowing the outcome]
Ok… I made this horrible animated gif to try to upload to gab.ai
I’m testing to display here.
Its funny, when I read it, I knew you must have heard the term at home, so of course it had meaning. I think long ago Willard tried to school Brandon on how to read.. basically with the principle of charity… The “other” is saying something interesting and meaninful and a good listener, an empathetic listener, tries to figure out what the other meant.
But Brandons responses are: the world is insane. Your writing is nonsense. and this is how words have meaning.
So here is how I was trained.. I guess it starts in religious school, where the text is sacred, and so must have meaning and must make sense, and your job is to figure out how it makes sense.
In the catholic tradition the tendency was of course to rely primarily on the institution of the church to deliever the meaning.
As protestant we were encouraged to read “for ourselves”
which is why you get crazy stuff like mary baker eddy ..
yes we had to study all the branches and study how to intrepret text
That makes it easy to understand this
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
Nonsense right?
Debate: Personally, I won’t watch the debate live. I know I will see all sorts of unforced errors and incompetence on the part of the moderators, and will feel like throwing a shoe at the TV. I do think the debate is very important for Trump because if he comes off as reasonably competent, he will pick up a slice of voters who want change and who are currently afraid of him. I am pretty sure the debates helped Reagan a lot in this manner when Reagan faced Jimmy Carter.
JD
The idea that the debates will have no effect is a myth. Most people won’t change their minds, but some people will. There are easily enough of the latter to decide the election. Something like 18% of the people polled either are undecided or say they will vote for a third party candidate; typically about half of the latter end up voting for one of the major party candidates. Plus the polls seem to indicate that some people are wavering between the two candidates. So 10% to 15% of the electorate is potentially up for grabs. Easily enough to produce a decisive result on Nov. 8 if they mostly swing the same way.
Mike M,
I think it’s close enough that it matters.
Trump has to avoid looking insane.
Hillary has to avoid looking evasive and prevaricating.
This will be a challenge for both of them.
Obviously, both have to avoid actually swooning or collapsing on stage. Hillary better not cough a lot. (This is a tough break for her because Trump can get away with a little coughing.)
If she does start hacking or swooning, Trump’s best move is to look sympathetic and concerned, not jump on it.
Either one could do well to show a light side. Both can– so the question is whether they will. Trump has to mention some policies. I’m not sure they need to be well thought out. They will be new so no one will fact check them.
“BTW: Koenig performed Jim and my marriage ceremony.”
Doesn’t sound right, but I can’t come up with anything better.
From Peggy Noonan’s column, The Year of the Reticent Voter, in the 9/24-25/2016 WSJ:
I was wondering if 538 might come up with Trump over 50%, while simultaneously having Hillary favored to win states that total to 270 votes. Something like Trump wins Romney +Florida+Ohio+Iowa+Nevada for 266 while trailing by a small amount in several more states.
Individually Hillary has better than 50% chance in Penn, Wisc, Mich, Virg, Colo, Minn, NH, but overall Trump comes out ahead.
I’m not sure how Silver handles the problem of non-independence among states. For example, if Trump is trailing by 10 in 30 states, and he needs 2 of them to win, the stats will say his chance of winning any one of the 10 is 5%, and they might declare his chances of winning 2 is then 9%, but really it is close to 0.
Trump was at 8% chance on Aug 8, and 12 days later was still at 12%.
The debates do make a difference. For Trump and George W, and any challenger, passing a ‘fitness’ test happens at the debates.
Now Romney clearly won the first debate, but he lost anyways. However, Obama’s hit of ‘I haven’t seen my pension. It’s not as big as yours.’ may have been more important than people realized.
Same with Bush’s re-election, with everyone thinking Kerry won the first debate decisively, but I think Bush’s attack on Kerry’s ‘global test’ set the tone for the campaign along with Bush’s ‘I believe in the transformative power of democracy’.
Lucia: “If she does start hacking or swooning, Trump’s best move is to look sympathetic and concerned, not jump on it.”
.
You mean as opposed to dryly asking her to have her spokesperson update us on what you have now?
.
I don’t know how he would react. We all know it would be a huge test of his self-control.
MikeN,
I confused the “nowcast” with the “forecast”. I didn’t realize Nate Silver reported so many things. His “now cast” is probability Trump would have won if vote was today. The forecast is probably Trump will win actual election. He’s still got Hilary ahead on that.
Forecast:
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/
He’s got Hillary ahead in the Electoral college.
Yes. If she starts coughing, he can count on plenty of people wanting to know that. So he can just say “Sorry you’re still under the weather. Somethings are hard to kick.” or something like that.
Using a binomial calculator, in order to get the probability of winning 1 in 10 to be 0.05, the probability of a win must be 0.0052. The probability of getting two wins is then 0.0012. However, if he’s trailing by 10% and the error is 3%, the probability of an individual win is a lot less than 0.005. If the error was 4%, that would be about right.
DeWitt, I meant .05 for a single state. I assume it would require a high error margin to be at 5% though. My point is that the binomial calculator I think would be flawed, because they are not independent events.
MikeN,
If Trump is 10% behind, the probability that he will win that state is a lot less than 0.05. But assuming that the spread is less or the polling error is large and the probability is 0.05, then, assuming independence, the probability that he would win 1 state is 0.32. Two states would be 0.075. That’s rather far from zero.
I don’t see a problem with assuming independence as a first approximation.
Re: DeWitt Payne (Comment #151239)
Yes, the reticent voter is the reason why polls are more unreliable than ever. Any major Hillary-negative event will give cover for many traditional GOP voters to declare support for Trump.
One other indication of this is also in the Daybreak poll – where Trump is leading but more people think Hillary will win.
I just popped back onto the site for a moment to see what people were saying about the debate, and I saw the exchange between Steven Mosher and lucia above. This bit jumped out at me:
I have not said anything of the sort, and I do not believe anything of the sort. I get people might find it easier to argue against things if they work very hard not to understand them, but personally, I’d think arguing against one’s own delusions would be quite tiring. So while you are free to write things like:
The reality anyone who attempted to read things with an open mind would see this “rule” you attribute to me exists only in your imagination.
With that said, I think I will just stay away from this site in the future. I get the impression a number of people would prefer that, and I know I am tired of having to deal with the same BS every time our hostess decides I don’t deserve the basic courtesy of even reading what I write before grossly mischaracterizing it.
I get you will never agree with what I say, but given it’s the same thing I’ve said half a dozen times in the past before, each with clear explanations that went unheeded, I think we’ll just have to live with that. That, or somebody could actually try disagreeing with me in a reasonable manner for once. I don’t expect that to happen though. Heck, just quoting what I actually say rather than giving crude and inaccurate paraphrases seems beyond people.
Brandon
Evidently, people constantly misconstrue what you wrote. You should take that as evidence your ‘explanations’ are not ‘clear’.
DeWitt, I am coming at this from explanations given by Jay Cost after the 2006 elections. He did something similar and concluded Democrats would not take control of Congress, particularly the Senate. Afterwards, he declared his error was that he considered the events to be independent, but in fact all the races moved a little bit and many close races went to the Democrats.