The 2nd presidential debate is tonight. Yes. I’m going to watch it. I’d probably be wiser to just put a knitting needle through my eye. But…. yeah. Gonna watch it. While drinking wine.
The previous presidential debate thread is clocking over 700 comments. Open thread.
This process is so painful!
I think I will have a second rum and coke before the debate starts.
I decided a while back to vote for Gary Johnson.
Nothing I have seen in the last 4 or 5 months has changed my mind.
I would love to see Gary Johnson get over 5% (major party status) and over 15% (to get in the debates in 2020).
Could be the millions of disappointed republicans will vote Johnson.
I sure hope so.
WGN is showing those two weasely looking Trump boys.
Here we go!
Crappy first question.
Interesting. First question did not appear to be directly about Trump’s vulgar clip of 11 years ago.
[Edit: Yeah, it was a pretty lame first question. 🙂 ]
Answers to Q1:
Hilary’s answer: boring platitudes. Gag me.
Trump’s: Agrees with boring platitudes. He also thinks country is great. Off on his thing…. (which question permits….)
Q from moderator: About the tape….. ….. …..
Oddly, Trump isn’t doing to bad; claiming locker room talk. Diverting. Not getting unhinged. (I expected worse.) Really… wtf does ISIS have to do with this.. but diverting was required.
Down into the gutter.
Oh… right…. Hilary respects all America? Bunk.
Deplorable.
Moderators trying hard to keep the focus on the scandal.
[Edit: Trump counterattacks!]
He’s brought up Bill and Hillary having attacked women.
applause! answer resonates.
edit: on both sides. Hillary ignores counterattack.
She claims what Trumps said is not right? Oh…. which things? She doesn’t tell us.
Using platitudes to try to divert.
And he doesn’t apologize? Did she apologize to Juanita Broderick? Bet not: Pot. Kettle. Black.
Clinton goes low, Trump goes high?
The birther zombie takes the stage! This is sad. Alright, Trump moves back on the attack.
Ok… He’s actually staying calm so far. The gutter is kinda sorta funny. (If the election wasn’t so tragic.)
He says Bernie signed on with the Devil!!!!!!!! OHHH!!!!
And emails….
Wow!!!! You’d be in jail!!!
Touche!
Laughter from the audience regarding the emails. Hillary talking a little too fast. Trump is holding his own. Out of control laughter / (because you’d be in jail!)!
Could Trump possibly pull this off?
There is no evidence anyone hacked… Well… maybe not. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t hacked. Moreover, it’s quite likely it was hacked and it was put in a position to be fairly easy to hack.
It was careless.
He’s way better than in debate 1!
Don’t get sulky Trump. It’s going well.
On to Obamacare! Darn good question!
“I’m a gentleman, Hillary. Go ahead.” Laughter. 🙂
His someone replaced Donald with a body double? This does not seem like the same guy as last time.
Admittedly, vague. We’ll get the best plan. No idea what it will be like. But presumably not single payer because he says that’s what she wants– which it probably is.
:> The moderators are getting rattled too. All he needs to do is keep calm and keep his feet on this point.
Oooohhh… Donald is doing stage craft. He knows where the camera is, standing behind so we can see how much taler he is. He’s calm… turns to shield face….
Donald… back to vagueness on what he’s going to do. (It’s going to be good. What we have is bad. Definitely leaving it up to whoever to figure out what we’ll do until later. He has no plan.)
Islamophobia – Muslims have to report problems when they see them. Now, moving on back to the attack.
.
Was it really an answer to the question asked? Heck no. Didn’t play too badly though.
Well… actually, they both think Muslims need to be eyes and ears. They just said it in different ways.
“Islamophobia” is a garbage term. It is not irrational to be afraid of Muslim terrorists. When the Left won’t discuss a problem, it calls those discussing it phobic.
JD
He’s handling the moderators pretty well too. Muslim ban? No, extreme vetting. And immediately, back on the counterattack.
[Edit: yes Lucia, that’s true.]
You guys are stronger than me. I would vomit my dinner if I watched more than a minute.
She will not let anyone who she ‘thinks’ pose a risk? That’s not the same as not letting in someone who is a risk. (I’m not a “don’t let them in” kinda gal. But really…. her “thoughts” are hardly any sort of protection.)
Half way through and he hasn’t exploded into a ball of flame yet. . .
Again, not half bad. Flip Muslim ban question into attack regarding Obama’s illegal immigration record. Trump took his smart pills tonight.
Clinton’s paid speeches.
“You need both a public and private position on certain issues”. (Supposed HRC quote.)
Q: Is it ok for a politician to be two faced.
A: “As I recall….. Abraham Lincoln….
A though question for Clinton!
She learns her history from a movie?
Oh… She’s talking about Putin hacking. He should say: “Adversaries hack. And this woman had classified material on a server in her bathroom”.
The Lincoln Defense, not to be confused with the Chewbacca Defense from South Park. Who’s going to attack Lincoln?
.
Not a very smooth segue to Russia influencing the election. Putin wants Trump to be President! Trump needs to release his taxes!
.
And Trump once again gets a laugh.
Conspiracy theory time. Trump in collusion with Putin and the proof is in Trump’s tax returns.
Why the F is he talking about taxes. What an idiot.
The nose dive begins!
Darn Trump; you let her slip away on that one.
Lucia, agreed!
Trump:
Getting rid of carried interest provisions.
Lower regulations.
Bring tax rate down.
Cutting taxes for middle class.
(Note sure how he’s going to do it. But getting rid of carried interest is at least specific.)
Ok, quick answer on getting rid of carried interest provisions, back on the attack. “Hillary is raising your taxes! I’m lowering them.”
Move it onto the economy, good!
She keeps saying “not true”… but… uhmmm… what? She keeps saying that and then not pointing out one single false statement. It’s rehearsed– she just planned to say it. Mantra. Oooooohmmmmm.
Trump doesn’t pay any taxes!
Trump is going to cut his own taxes!
Back to the magic $250K a year number. It’s Barrack Obama back in 2008 [come again], only without the charisma, energy, or plausibility.
I think Trump is getting more laughs. Am I mistaken?
Lucia,
“Why the F is he talking about taxes.”
.
Your vulgarity may have permanently excluded you from election to the presidency. Too bad, you would make a better president than either of these turkeys.
LOL SteveF. Trump seems to be getting a better response from the audience than Hillary to me. Trump is handling the tax write off thing very well.
Of course- I am not an unbiased viewer; I like Trump a heck of a lot better than Hillary at this point and I’ll freely admit that, so there you have it. I lack substantial objectivity here.
[Hillary scores a point with the audience, scattered cheering. Lets see if she can build on it here, talking about her record.]
Holy smokies; I’d vote for ya Lucia!
Trump – moving on to SYRIA – you don’t want to derail that. Lets’ move on to Syria please!
Hilary’s only above $250,000 taxes. Doubt that she is including Obamacare charges (taxes according to the Chief Justice) in this. If you make over about $85,000 or $90,000, your taxes are being substantially raised. Mine were raised by $6,000 last year.
JD
Alright Trump – this is your chance coming up. Syria. Knock it out of the park for us.
What would you do about Syria…. isn’t it a lot like the Holocaust…
Hilary: It’s bad… blah…blah…. Waiting to hear what she will do…. Ok. She advocates a no fly zone today. We need leverage with Russians. (Uhmm… which we are going to get freakin’ how!?!?….)
At least she’s figured out Russia is a problem. (Oh… she hasn’t takein on Russian. Bunk!!! Russia played us during the Obama administration.)
Yeah.. HIllary wasn’t the line in the sand. She was the “reset button”. Too bad Donald didn’t know that.
Not a home run on Syria, but maybe a solid base hit. Why the heck are you ad libing this one Trump you should have had this one polished and ready to go!
[Awesome, she’s giving you a do over Trump. Make it count!]
[Edit again: FINALLY. Show some temper. Appeal to the common people. Get the moderators arguing on behalf of status quo policies! Appeal to authority with the Generals! Chock full of logical fallacies, but plays great on TV!]
Trump: We have to get Isis. (My impression is his idea is to let Syria, Russian and Iran wipe them out? Is that yours?)
JD,
The big thing with Hillary is the self-dealing from the Clinton Foundation…. unlimited tax free travel expenses; employing all your political operatives tax free, selling influence via a ‘charitable’ foundation, etc.
I think he is saying let Syria, Russian and Iran do their thing until ISIS is dealt with.
Point that we don’t say what we are going to be attacking X before attacking.
Hey: Why is Martha Radditch explaining what she thinks the do it? Really? Really?
(And Radditch’s voice pitch rising above ‘moderator’ level.)
I think that if Trump has any plan whatsoever to deal with ISIS, he’s never given consistent enough answers to questions about it for us to have any realistic hope of deducing what the heck it is.
Mike M,
That’s what I think he’s saying: Let Syrian, Russia, Iran do the dirty work before going after them.
Oh… Trump should say: “Yeah. She probably was involved in those things. And the discussions got stored on a hackable server in her bathroom.”
Q: Do you believe you can be a (whatever word) president for everyone.
Well… yeah. They are both going to say yes.
devoted President.
It gave him a chance to replay the Deplorables and renew some attacks. Let’s see how she counters.
Too bad Donald didn’t say “charter schools” so poor families can have choice. Oh… well…
Lucia,
As a dispassionate observer, I almost got the impression you were hoping Trump would do better than in the last debate. Has there been some evolution in your overall revulsion about this race?
I wasn’t hoping. I’m just surprised. I was expecting him to explode in a ball of flames at minute 5!
Who’d a thunk?
And– I admit– now that he’s not exploding, I would like him to say more apt things.
I am not so surprised. If Trump was so unable to control himself, he would be unable to make successful business deals.
She wants to change balance on Supreme Court (which is one of the reasons I cannot vote for her.)
Lucia,
I’d thunk anyone who has been in business for decades does not regularly explode in a ball of flame. The extreme jerk factor obscures much.
She wants to politicize the court. But the Senate should keep politics out of the confirmation process.
I am thinking Hillary should announce Barack Obama as her replacement for Scalia. A perfect candidate.
Energy question!
Trump: Energy is under siege.
Alright! At least a B+ answer on energy. Like most Trump answers, extremely short on details, but should play well. He should have mentioned nuclear.
China is dumping steel all over the U.S. killing our steelworkers. Now there’s an image!
Yeah… we are going to create jobs with renewables.
And she’s also going to revitalize coal companies (regions). How? (Evidently by looking comprehensively.)
Revitalize coal? That is a joke. She wants to close coal mines; she has said so many times. Let’s hope some ‘fact checking’ journalists review that….. they won’t.
What do you respect in other was a great question. Hillary’s question was good…. but you know……Trump looks gracious at close. He said something about her. Which helps him.
Wow. They both managed to say nice things about each other.
Actually, I think she said she wants to revitalize coal country. By spending tax dollars on something.
Trump gives a real answer on what he respects! He ought to score some points there.
Trump did fairly well. I didn’t see any knockout punches, but now the pussy-grabbing thing is old news; he made it past.
Better than I expected for him. This one might remain a nail biter until all the votes are counted I think.
I think neither did horribly. Neither did well.
Trump did not look insane. And he said something he needed to say and did so on a public platform. Trump has been sliding so badly he may have managed to help himself more. But can that really halt his slide? Dunno.
I’m pretty sure it’s not enough to reverse it and let him catch up.
And: Still going with Gary “what’s a leppo?” Johnson.
Saying things about each other…. must be like tooth picks being slowly driven under fingernails.
I agree with that summary.
Stopping the slide is the first step in reversing it. As Will Rogers put it: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
The pole that matters is in a few weeks I still hang up on the telephone pollers.
Thanks for providing this thread Lucia. Somehow it made it less awful to sit through the debates in real time on the Blackboard so far.
SteveF,
Stopping to think a bit more after the debate is over: I did want Trump to do ok-to well. The reason is that I would like the Republicans to control the house and senate. The top of the ticket does affect races down ticket and so I would prefer Trump does better rather than worse.
As for president: I hate both Trump and Clinton. It’s impossible for me to say which I hate more and which I want less in the White House. But am hoping for Trump to be more like he was here than the way he was last week.
Lucia,
“Trump has been sliding so badly he may have managed to help himself more. But can that really halt his slide?”
…..
Considering everything that has happened in last several weeks, Trump’s slide has been comparatively mild. I believe he is 3-4 points behind nationally. That is not much. If my memory is correct, Carter was substantially ahead of Reagan about 2.5 months ahead of the 1980 election date.
….
Also, Clinton hasn’t been campaigning in effect. When she campaigns things seem to go bad. So, she is at a disadvantage in between debates. I do expect more leaks of Trump’s financial records, but who knows what more Wikileaks will bring. Also, wouldn’t be surprised if there was a large terrorist attack between now and the election. I think the election is still very much in play and I think Trump will get some sort of bump from this debate.
JD
Lucia,
i think the House is far out of reach for the Democrats. The Senate is on the edge, with the potential for Trump, acting like a jerk, driving people away from the polls very real. I am resigned to having to turn off the TV when the president comes on for the next 4 years. I am not resigned to the Supreme Court permanently subverting the constitution.
Lucia makes a good point about Congress. It would be really awful if Trump were to lose badly. Not just because of Congress, but also because he has raised important issues that are sure to be ignored if he loses badly.
JD Ohio
But…oddly, I the he neutralized that by saying — without any embarrassment that of course he used the tax loss to lower/avoid taxes in later years.
Until the debate, he couldn’t do that effectively.
Frank Lunz says Trump won debate 2. https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/785313334073651200
Lunz has a focus group with real humans attending. (He said Hillary won debate 1.)
SteveF
Well…. I haven’t watched a state of the union in… oh… lets see… Obama, “W”… I’m not sure if I watched Clinton. But though I disagreed with him often, his demeanor didn’t annoy the crap out of me. So I may have.
I usually read state of the unions and any important president speeches. I find Obama very annoying to watch– and it’s not just a matter of disagree with him.
I find both Hillary and Donald annoying to watch. So: State of the Unions will be read, not watched.
Lucia: “But…oddly, I the he neutralized that by saying — without any embarrassment that of course he used the tax loss to lower/avoid taxes in later years.”
I have always felt that if he had a big loss, it is perfectly legitimate to use the loss in the future. What I would be leery of is whether the loss is legitimate.
…. So many people on the Left hate Trump to their last fiber that I think that they would be happy to break privacy laws to hurt Trump. Also, I would expect Clinton to signal under the radar that she would encourage people to do that. There are lots of weird things that can be done with finances and taxes, and I believe that there are many people looking for those types of things now with respect to Trump.
JD
Thanks for live blogging.
I watched the entire debate.
The rum and coke did indeed help.
It was hard to watch – especially the first question and the non-answers from both.
Neither knew how to answer about role modeling for young people – since they both went to the gutter, they really couldn’t.
That was a bit sad, that neither could give the woman a good solid answer to the 1st question.
The rest went better and they actually talked a bit about issues (which I really don’t think they did in the 1st debate).
The moderators did a better job of shutting down both Donald and Hillary.
I think the moderators did better, Donald did better than I expected and Hillary looked like she couldn’t believe Donald just shrugged off the tape as locker room talk.
It was painful when the camera went to Bill Clinton – that had to be hard for him to hear.
Not a very inspiring night.
I wonder what the rest of the world thinks of America tonight?
Yeah. But really, Trump did practice that. Often her side tries to make it seem that they are criticizing her for not divorcing Bill. But that’s not what people hold against Hillary, and Trump did aim right on that one. He took away her effective talking points by having the women Bill harmed in the audience. Hillary knew Juanita Brodericks story about Hillary being the one to intimidate her could get pulled out. And the camera’s could go to Juanita. And so on. Hillary can’t afford that.
There are so many things he doesn’t aim right on (like once again not using “the emails” effectively. ) But he got that one right.
Really though someone has to get it through Trump head that the time to make the point about the emails is precisely when people are talking about the possibility of states hacking. Yeah… he can discuss the legality issue. But the big issue is: You, Hillary, but the nations security at risk by storing classified stuff on a server in your bathroom for your own selfish reasons.
I also thought he was trying to get into camera view to compare with Clinton. It seems like the split screen camera operator is helping Clinton in both debates by making her larger.
Martha Raddatz is knowledgeable on foreign policy, so it made sense that she would interject more there. It was commented before that it would make Hillary extra vulnerable unlike with other moderators where she could say whatever.
Anderson Cooper has been one of the more reasonable commentators, and even he was campaigning for Hillary, with ‘She said some of them were irredeemable.’
I’m a little surprised to see Trump catching that. I think Anderson must think it is particularly damaging. Hillary is a Methodist who speaks the language, so she certainly knew what she was saying.
>She learns her history from a movie?
MikeM, I’m forgetting the movie, but she did the same thing in the late 90s, with regard to war crimes I think.
On energy, he hasn’t highlighted that energy bills will go up.
On taxes, I hope he’s holding in reserve the attack that Hillary has bad judgment for talking about it. She is basically advocating it is a big problem for people to save hundreds of millions in taxes after losing a billion dollars.
>Wow!!!! You’d be in jail!!!
I frequently defended him last year for just this reason. Satisfying to see it happen.
I was thinking that if he was going to lose, he at least should go all out.
I agree. He didn’t attack on the emails as effectively as he could have.
Did you notice that Trump said 39000 once (instead of 33,000 deleted). I am sure he just misspoke – but it stuck out for me.
I heard a fact checker say that the deleting after the subpoena was complicated – because Hillary ordered them deleted 3 months before the subpoena, but they weren’t deleted due to some peon error and then the peon deleted them (but Hillary had nothing to do with it).
I would love to be paid to investigate that – to see whether there were any communications about – oops I forgot to delete the emails – what should I do? Oh well – I will have to rely on others to probe this question.
MikeN
No. The moderator shouldn’t do that. It doesn’t matter if they are knowledgeable or not. Moderator are supposed to let the candidates respond to those things.
You can learn a lot about WWII from John Wayne movies. 😉
But really, saying that’s how you learned your history is not a strong way to claim you are knowledgeable– not even if it’s not a movie but a PBS documentary or something.
BTW: I still think his two sons look like weasels. And yet Ivanka is very pretty. Odd that.
https://today.yougov.com/news/2016/10/09/post-debate-poll/
Post-debate poll: Clinton 47%, Trump 42%
(YouGov interviewed 812 registered voters who watched the debate)
“revitalize coal companies”? I thought her pitch was finding something for those folks to do.
I really hat the stuff about taking a deduction which is in the code being characterized as taking advantage of a loophole. Maybe i don’t know what a loophole is. I thought it was something which was unintended or had unintended benefits for someone who wasn’t supposed to get them.
And then attacking the Donald because he didn’t pay more taxes than the code required somehow meant he wasn’t supporting the troops or school children. akkkk.
He’s still despicable in my opinion and has no business in the white house. why does she think she needs to load him up with all the nonsense?
I’m not saying she should have interjected, but I understood why. Someone had predicted it, but with regards to Hillary. I wasn’t expecting her to be debating outright, but more followups.
RickA, the FBI has reported communications between key players after the subpoenas and before the deletions, but due to the immunity deals and the agreement to not search for communications of that time period were unable to get answers as to what was discussed.
I suspect that the existing evidence they uncovered would be enough to get an obstruction of justice conviction against most people.
Did Trump say “You’d be in jail.” or “You’ll be in jail”?
I assume he’d said the present perfect, as it matches Hillary’s statement.
The latter would really serve to put her on edge.
And Tiffany Trump backstage has a Sigourney Weaver moment.
Donald Jr looks fine to me, while the other one is weaselly. Good thing he wasn’t running against Trump in the primaries.
Fact-checking Trump:
Clinton is the devil
Used to be:
Clinton is a bigot
RB,
Are you suggesting one can fact check hyperbolic statements like someone is “the devil”? Because… no. You can’t.
For that matter, I think most of the time you can’t ‘fact check’ someone is a bigot.
Lucia,
Yes, you have to crowd-source it though.
He didn’t say she is the devil, he said Bernie signed on with the devil.
“You’ll be in jail” I’m pretty sure is “You’d be in jail.”
CNN fact-checked Did Hillary acid-wash her e-mails.
They didn’t do like NBC and say, no she used Bleach Bit; they rated it false because the FBI found no evidence of collusion between her and the tech.
RB, watch this:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4624180/tiffany-trump-greets-donald
It’s not Tiffany the family dislikes… It’s Kushner.
You gotta love where illegally funneling money to political parties cause family members to rightly go to authorities and the reaction is for the guilty to set up his brother-in-law with a prostitute and videotape it, then send it to his sister to deter her from assisting the prosecution. That was Jared Kushner’s dad (Charles), whom Jared visited every weekend while in jail. Yup, Ivanka’s husband (Jared) and Father-in-law (Charles). She converted to Judaism to be accepted into that family. But they were wealthy and had connections…
MikeN
That the FBI didn’t find evidence for of collusion doesn’t make the claim false. That makes it suspected but unproven. That’s a different thing.
Sue,
Even in the view RB had, it didn’t look like Tiffany was moving away from her a kiss from Dad as some claimed. It looked like she got out of the way of a hand shake. The view you show only confirms that that’s what happened.
sue,
Charles Kushner sounds like a piece of work. But I can’t fault a son for visiting his Dad in jail.
I noticed that the CBS coverage team did not have a single conservative voice. All their commentators referred to Bill Clinton’s victims as “accusers,” (BTW, as did Megyn Kelly). It seems that left really cares about women and minorities issues except if it is inconvenient for their overall mission of controlling civilization to save it from humanity.
lucia:
It doesn’t necessarily make it suspected either.
Anyway,one of the biggest failures of Gowdy’s committee was not serving Pratt River Networks with a legal order to preserve all Clinton emails. What the hell were they thinking?
By the way, my biggest laugh of the night was Trump trying to explain how the freeware BleachBit works.
“Very expensive.” Heh. Trump seemed to be describing the process as if they were literally bleaching paper at times.
It’s a single pass electronic shredder, and is not particularly effective as I understand.
Early polls seem to suggest Clinton “won” the debate.
http://www.vox.com/2016/10/10/13223134/second-presidential-debate-poll-trump-clinton
I think Clinton was trying to look human rather than come off as a political wonk. For people who don’t outright despise her already, I suspect that generally worked.
I think Trump was chumming the waters mostly. He was appealing to his base, rather than expanding it. In other words, a “trying to keep your base from leaving you” moment.
Longer term strategic view is Clinton did little to harm herself through her conservative tactics, but Trump’s left himself very vulnerable:
• The Banana Republic moment is already coming back to bite him.
• Anderson Cooper got him to say he’s never assaulted a woman. There are several women in the wings who say otherwise. That’s probably the biggest negative.
• Most people understand that Bill Clinton isn’t running for president, so Trump’s little game at the beginning doesn’t help.
• He came across as exploitive towards those women for his political gain. I predict that, together with the sexual assault issue, is going to have the biggest impact.
Kudos to the moderators and debate organizers–they saved the election for him, and the country from even further embarrassment, by refusing to allow the World Wrestling Federation moment. What a complete bozo. That would have finally sunk him, right there.
I lost respect for Bill Clinton’s accusers in that they turned what is supposed to be serious accusations into a circus act. That does not benefit them, nor any other victims of sexual assault.
Trump is threatening to not do the third debate unless he’s given free run. I say no third debate then.
Carrick,
It is suspected. Perhaps not by those who did the investigation. And perhaps some people don’t think those who suspect it have any bases for the suspicion. But it is suspected and there is some basis:
1) The records were bleach-bitted.
2) There is some evidence (reddit) that this may have been done at the request of someone “important”. (We don’t know who that was– which means that we can’t exclude Hillary involvement.)
3) The person who stood to benefit was Hillary.
This may not be strong evidence. But it is a basis for suspicion.
Carrick,
I don’t think it was as bad for Trump as Hillary supporters (which you seem to be) think. But I agree it didn’t save him (though it’s clear some on Twitter think he did). And Trump does desperately need to get people who are not in his base to vote for him. I’m not convinced he did.
And honestly, I don’t think that World Wresting tape hurts him one bit. I saw it before. It’s a circus act by entertainers, and he was acting in that venue. I think most people know WWW is a circus act and recognize that someone acting like a clown at the thing is what one does there. Do Hillary supporters think it “adds to” their view of Trump? Sure. But does it? I doubt undecideds or Trump supporters see that tape at all the same way. It’s a big nothing.
Trump being Trump, I doubt Hillary’s victory is in danger.
Lucia,
Yep. After some introspection, I think last night felt like a win to me because I did expect that debate to be an obvious and overwhelming fail for Trump. He’s still hanging off the cliff, but hanging on. But he’s not dead yet!
But yes. It’s not as if he’s winning, and the odds suggest I’d better go on getting used to the idea of at least four years of Madam President.
Carrick,
The effectiveness of Bleachbit’s single pass scramble seems good: https://bleachbit.blogspot.com/2009/06/validating-secure-erase.html?m=1 Have you seen information to the contrary? I suppose just writing all zeros would be perfectly effective, so long as all unused disc space were identified and overwritten.
For a slightly different review of the debate, try this:
http://waterfordwhispersnews.com/2016/10/10/top-10-quotes-from-last-nights-us-presidential-debate/?utm_source=WWN_Facebook_Page&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_campaign=Social_Link&utm_content=Article
lucia:
On I thought you were referring to the FBI. I’m sure they suspected it at one point. One would have to look to see if you could find a connection.
No, I’m not a Hillary supporter. If there had been a decent alternative I’d be voting for them instead of Gary Johnson.
Lucia wrote: “And Trump does desperately need to get people who are not in his base to vote for him. I’m not convinced he did.”
Trump needs people not in Hillary’s base to vote for him. Many of those people really don’t want to vote for Hillary, but are afraid of Trump. If Trump reduced that fear last night (and I suspect he did) then he made progress toward that goal.
SteveF:
I get an annual security brief, and data recovery is an issue that comes up.
It’s my understanding that over-writing with zeros is good enough so you that can’t recover the original data using ordinary “undelete” sort of data recovery software. (Brandon is probably more knowledgable about this and could correct if I’m overly naive about that.)
But when you overwrite a magnetic medium with zeros, a weak magnetic image is retained that can be recovered using specialized hardware. Google “data recovery hardware” if you’re interested.
The only completely safe way to really delete data, where major world governements with huge foresics budgets can’t recover the data, is to incinerate the disk.
Carrick,
Ahh… so another for Gary Johnson! I was at a party Saturday and one of the other people said they were voting for Gary Johnson!
Mike M,
The thing is, the first debate scared people a lot. He really needed to stay under control them. Sure: he was more in control in the 2nd one…but still….
Carrick,
I was unaware of that. If a weak image remains after an overwrite with zeros, then I guess it would take multiple overwrites (random bytes, all zeros, random bytes, all zeros, etc) to make all trace of the original data disappear. Incineration seems a bit of overkill, but for sure would eliminate all data.
The WWW metaphor is interesting. If it is applicable, it means this election is far from over.
Just because team Hillary bleached out her servers (after being legitimately and lawfully requested, apparently) that does not mean that those who apparently enjoyed access to her unsecured server faithfully bleached out their copies.
This is far, far from over. It may get much worse for Trump or for our American Evita. Time will tell.
Trump missed his opportunity to congratulate Clinton for being a fabulous politician.
hunter
Even if some didn’t I suspect the copies won’t come out before the election. Many those involved in her unsecured server are either more or less on “team Hillary”. But even those who aren’t might be are worried about their own liability, don’t see an upside to themselves in bringing their stuff forwards, or they also tended to delete stuff. So they aren’t likely to bring it forward. Also: if it’s true the administration isn’t wanting to look very hard, they aren’t likely to escalate any search mission now.
“Carrick,
I was unaware of that. If a weak image remains after an overwrite with zeros, then I guess it would take multiple overwrites (random bytes, all zeros, random bytes, all zeros, etc) to make all trace of the original data disappear. Incineration seems a bit of overkill, but for sure would eliminate all data.”
yes. An ordinary system delete ( drag to the trash) just overwrits the “directory” of files. easy to recover.
reformating the disk and overwriting with zeros ( typically several passes if you know what you are doing ) can still leave traces.
so. crush and burn. bascially if you work in a classified enviroment that is what you have to do to properly dispose of documents (burn barrel) and drives/disks/ media
To reduce the magnetic hysteresis effect to negligible levels, multiple writes are required. According to this article, the US DoD recommendation includes a total of 6*3=18 writes.
On the other hand, NIST 800-88 writes:
SteveF,
You need a minimum of three passes of data overwriting, but the more, the better up to 35 or so. Another option would be to encrypt the entire drive using a strong encryption algorithm and destroy any record of the key. But to be really sure, you need to take the disk surface temperature above its Curie temperature, i.e. incineration.
surely a 4lb hammer is all that is required to ensure the data is deleted?
lucia and hunter: It’s my impression that very little data that got “BleachBit-ed” wasn’t eventually recovered. In other words, if you want the brighter bolder world promised by Donald Trump, don’t rest your hopes on this.
SteveF—it gets much easier to fully destroy data if your volume or documents are encrypted to start with.
Steve Mosher— I have my own program (“vanquish”) that writes with a single pass of zeros and over writes the file names with spaces before deleting (unlinking) the file.
I figure this is good enough to protect against causal theft (for files containing tax documents etc.), without worrying about some hypothetical future situation where I’d be accused of destroying evidence. Obviously I expect that never to come up in real life, but stranger things have happened.
Graeme,
No, the hammer renders the drive unusable, of course, but it does not erase all the bytes… some of which could still be read if you worked hard enough. Exposing the media to a very strong magnetic field should also do it, but you would need to know the required field strength to be be sure to be well above the required level. Incineration is sure to be effective, even if a little over the top.
Carrick,
I don’t think any “more” email information will come out before the election. I don’t think it will be recovered from bleached servers; I don’t think people will turn in their own copies.
Lucia,
“I don’t think people will turn in their own copies.”
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No additional disclosure of Hillary’s bleachbit’ed emails is nearly as certain as the sun rising tomorrow morning. Even in the very unlikely event of Trump wining election, there would be plenty of lame-duck time for the State Department to get rid of all copies that may be on other peoples’ computers. The only possibility of additional disclosure is if someone really did hack into Hillary’s bathroom server. But I doubt anyone beyond Wikileaks is going to do that, even if they managed to get Hillary’s emails.
lucia, my guess is everything that’s of probative value from Clinton’s servers has come out already. That is there’s nothing more “there” to leak.
SteveF, as Steven Mosher points out, hard drives are required to be destroyed (when they contain Secret and above data).
In fact, if you reuse a hard drive that once stored classified data, the classification level of the drive is equal to the highest clearance level of the data now contained on it, or previously contained on it.
Carrick,
“..hard drives are required to be destroyed (when they contain Secret and above data).”
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Sounds a bit like the old joke: “If I tell you I will have to kill you.” 🙂
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I suspect multiple over-writes, if correctly done, are perfectly effective at making all previous data disappear. But I understand incineration has a certain finality other techniques do not.
SteveF,
Even if multiple over-rights are perfectly effective, to be sure they were done correctly, you’d probably have to turn the drive over to a specialist who was independent of the person who wants to continue to use the drive, and that specialist would have to be certified to perform and check the overright– and cleared to be trustoworthy and yada, yada, yada….. It’s probably cheaper to burn them!
Regarding BleachBit, while the on-screen text was did Hillary acid-wash her e-mails, the actual fact check they rated false was on a narrower point about the FBI found no evidence of violating a subpoena. I don’t think anyone is challenging that she actually used the software to erase the e-mails. NBC’s Fact-check did rate the statement false because no chemicals were used.
Lucia, the WWF moment is not Trump’s appearance there, but that he was planning to have the women enter with his family and confront Bill Clinton at the intro.
How about when the media puts up Alicia Machado’s statements about what Donald Trump said to her, and ignores statements made against a Democratic politician?
When the Juanita Broaddrick story originally came, Bill Clinton was asked one question, his answer was my lawyer made a statement and that’s all I have to say on the subject, and that’s all the media asked.
Washington Post’s Chris Cilizza tweeted out a complaint that Trump kept referring to Hillary with ‘she’ and ‘her’. I think we can score the debate for Trump.
I wanted to agree with Kasparov but maybe he exaggerated that Trump would get all of this done on Day 1.
Heh. What to make of this? Not rhetorical, I really don’t know at this point what I make of it.
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Any ideas how to fact check a claim by a news anchor that secret service banned flash photography at the debate for fear it would trigger ‘Hillary’s seizure disorder?’ Again, not rhetorical, I’d welcome suggestions.
[Edit: Maybe the anchor was ad-libbing the first explanation that came to mind, and it had no basis in fact?]
Yeah. That was a joke I think. 🙂
Since I was brought up:
The naivety actually goes the other way. The idea of using something like a magnetic force microscope to recover overwritten data from harddrives is one of those urban myths that has floated around for ages. While the idea isn’t theoretically impossible, there’s no evidence it can actually be done. For something which has received so much attention, we would expect people to have done if by now. (This is for modern technology. Things like floppy discs are a different story.)
There are real reasons data gets recovered even after being “overwritten.” They aren’t because of some voodoo that lets you pull back data from the oblivion though. They’re mostly because of data just not getting overwritten in the first place. File-specific deletion and overwriting can easily fail to hit all copies of a file, and system-wide overwriting offers no guarantees either.
The biggest reason for needing specialized hardware to recover data from harddrives other than the harddrive simply getting damaged is a class of problems that causes memory on the drive to become inaccessible via normal means. A drive with bad sectors can’t be completely overwritten (or read) via normal means because operating systems simply can’t access them to read or write anything.
While I’d disagree with this in general as software based options can usually be perfectly fine if one knows how to use them properly, it’s worth pointing out incineration is not a simple solution. For incineration to be effective, you have to ensure sufficient heat and duration to either cause sufficient damage to the physical media itself or to destroy the magnetic signals. Neither of those is easy. You can’t just toss a drive in a fire. Personally, I prefer degaussing drives or, ideally, using a chemical solution.
By the way, you might want to look at a comment I posted in the last thread. A person had sent me an e-mail asking about some IT-related things you wrote in that thread, so I went ahead and posted my main response to him over there for others to read.
Steven Mosher:
With modern storage media, overwriting data with multiple passes is not known to be any more secure than using a single pass, and there is testing which suggests it is not any more secure. Unless we’re talking about something like floppy discs, a single pass should suffice for anything.
Moreover, since software based overwriting relies on the operating system’s ability to access all portions of the drive, no number of passes could suffice.
DeWitt Payne:
The number 35 comes from the Gutmann method, a method designed to ensure overwritten data could not be recovered. It was never the number of passes that could be needed. It was the number of passes needed to cover each of the encoding types Gutmann designed the methodology to cover. In actuality, any single drive would have needed far fewer passes as a user could simply use the ones for the drive’s particular encoding.
Moreover, Gutmann designed his approach back in the mid-90s when encoding types were quite different. The three encoding types he targeted are pretty much no longer used. Gutmann himself has criticized people for using his approach on more modern PRML type harddrives as it is inappropriate. It wouldn’t be any better than using any other approach, even if one believes multiple passes are needed.
Graeme:
Nope. Large amounts of data can be contained in small spaces, and broken pieces can have the data on them re-combined to (various extents).
Carrick:
I’m not aware any “data that got ‘Bleachbit-ed'” was recovered. Other copies of the same material might have been obtained, of course.
The Hill 3 days ago reported:
Under a court order these work related emails must be disclosed with the other Clinton emails in response to Judical Watch’s FOIA suit on an “expedited basis” (I suppose before the election).
No it’s not before the election. The judge allowed for a slower processing.
After the election? So President Elect Clinton could grounds for impeachment materialize before she takes the oath? This is better than Wrestlemania!
Ron Graf,
“So President Elect Clinton could grounds for impeachment materialize before she takes the oath?”
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Well, unless one of those messages proved she is in fact a serial hatchet murderer, she won’t ever face impeachment. The Senate will never convict her over lies, self-dealing, and corruption (too many Democrats), so the Republicans, having learned their lesson the last time they tried to throw a Clinton out of office, will not bring an impeachment motion to the floor. I am reminded of the old prayer: ‘Lord, give me the strength to change the things which should be changed, the courage to accept the things which can’t be changed, and the wisdom to know which is which.’ I think the Speaker is probably wise enough to know which is which.
Brandon, nobody anything about atomic force microscopes.
Hardware techniques exist, and have existed for decades, for recovering data that has been overwritten. They all involve reading the analog signal from your drive.
If you look at the analog signal on the hard drive, you’ll see that consecutive writes don’t exactly line up. Nor do they need to for a reliable reading of the 0s and 1s from the most recent write to the hard drive.
By digitizing the signal at a much higher resolution you can effectively subtract off (digitally filter) this most recent write. This yields a distorted version of the signal that was there before that writing. Typically, this distortion is recoverable in most cases because you know the underlying signal is itself also a digital signal (typically with a few error correction bits).
One purpose of multiple writes is to make sure you’ve fully overlapped the original signal.
Regarding recovering BleachBit’d data by the FBI—they didn’t say as much, but I’m pretty sure I’ve read somewhere that they were able to recover the data from that server, which pretty much implies that.
SteveF: “Well, unless one of those messages proved she is in fact a serial hatchet murderer, she won’t ever face impeachment.”
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Sadly, if one of those messages is incriminating the FBI would have had to act on it already, which means there is no way they would turn it over, judge or no judge. They would keep in a file in the J. Edgar Hoover Building to hold over Clinton.
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There is a slightly better chance than, say, cold fusion in 15 years that a foreign actor has an incriminating Clinton’s email and will leak it for fun. Like, Lucia, I having trouble accepting President HRC.
Carrick, I’m not sure I’m interpreting this:
Correctly for more reasons than the lack of a verb. It seems you are trying to claim nobody said anything about using a magnetic force micoscope (MFM) to recover overwritten data. This seems to be supported by you continuing on to say:
Yet the comment in which you invoked my name explicitly said:
While you offer no explanation of how you believe a weak magnetic image could be observed without using a MFM. The hardware that gives the best read precision other than that is a spin-stand.* Not only are those nightmarishly difficult to recover data with (in any realistic scenario), I can’t see any reason one would refer to them over a MFM as an MFM is simply better.
So while it may be true nobody has explicitly referred to MFM, the reality is nobody has referred to what technology would be used at all other than your suggestion of “Google [it].” Given that, I assumed we were talking about the technology with the best chances of accomplishing what you said could be done. If you’re thinking of some other hardware that would be used, perhaps you could say what that would be so people don’t have to guess.
*I have heard of people attempting to combine MFMs and spin-stands to get the precision of the reading you get with an MFM and the speed of reading you get with a spin-stand. As far as I know, it hasn’t gone anywhere. Maybe you’ve heard something about this I haven’t heard?
By the way, the suggestion to “Google ‘data recovery hardware’ if you’re interested” is unhelpful. I decided to test it out to see what turned up, and it was pretty much just offers for commercial services where companies would recover data for you, with the most powerful tool I found any claiming to use to be the PC-3000.
That’s a very powerful tool, one I actually had to consider once because a guy was determined to do some data recovery in-house, which was a terrible idea. I talked him out of it by detailing the costs. That’s not really important except to note this is high-end hardware we’re talking about, and it cannot do anything like what you claim.
I’m not sure what you expected people to find when you basically said, “Google it,” but I didn’t see anything that seemed helpful. You can learn a lot about approaches used to fix various hardware problems, but if that’s what you’re interested in, I’d recommend reading something like this instead. That document is pretty old, but it still does a good job of giving an overview of data recovery topics. At least, it does as long as you’re not interested in recovering data from solid-state drives (which becomes a whole other thing).
Ron Graf,
“I having trouble accepting President HRC.”
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Just keep the remote close by so you can hit the mute button when needed. Then close your eyes if it is still too distressing. Yes, Hillary will be awful, but it is looking more likely she will be the least liked candidate ever elected. How much Congress can restrain her remains to be seen, but I think you can count on a continuation of Obama’s illegal executive orders and unlawful regulations.
SteveF: “I think you can count on a continuation of Obama’s illegal executive orders and unlawful regulations.”
I agree. So it seems to me that President Trump will severely damage our self respect while President Clinton II will severely damage our constitution. Since the former is more easily recovered, I prefer Trump.
Bush/Clinton/Bush/O/Clinton? Even the tape that might have dealt Trump a potentially crippling blow has a Bush in it. Sad!
The more I think about what Carrick said, the more lost I am. He says:
When he says various approaches “all involve reading the analog signal from your drive,” what he’s referring to is reading the actual magnetic fields on the drive. This is contrasted with the digital signal one gets after a harddrive read/write head reads the magnetic fields and converts it into electrical signals to be processed by electronic components.
In other words, Carrick appears to have said nobody said anything magnetic field microscopy yet wants people to believe magnetic fields of harddrives are being read with higher resolution than drive heads can write the data at. How would one do that without a magnetic force microscope (MFM)?
Sure, one could perhaps use a different type of read/write heads to read the magnetic fields at higher resolutions. Or perhaps there is some other approach to do the same. None of those alternatives could possibly match the resolution and precision an MFM could offer though. If data cannot be recovered with the tools that give the highest resolution, it certainly cannot be recovered with tools that give less resolution. I actually had that in mind in my initial comment, which is why I wrote:
I said “something like a magnetic force microscope” as opposed to just “magnetic force microscope” to head off the idea only an MFM could be used for this. The point was the entire concept is an urban myth. I referred to MFMs as an example because they are the most powerful tool for this problem we have. If they can’t let us recover data, no other tool will either.
Perhaps Carrick can clarify what approach he believes can be used to recover data which has been overwritten by software like BleachBit, but until he does, I have to say it seems he has just fallen for the same urban myth so many other people have fallen for.
RB, I’d assumed it was just a coincidence, but it turns out to be a family cousin.
I’m surprised more wasn’t made by 9/11 truthers of the fact that one of W’s brothers was in charge of security at World Trade Center.
RB,
“Bush/Clinton/Bush/O/Clinton? ”
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Ya well, that may be one of the reasons Trump has more voters than his trademarked ‘bombastic jerk’ behavior would suggest. People are willing to kick over the card table because they are tired of seeing the same faces always at the table… and always playing like crap.
Obama tries his best to ignore Putin while he places SS-26 missiles at the edge of NATO this week, leaving one out on a barge to kiss and wave and give the finger to the USA satellites.
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Wikileaked email shows Clinton Foundation COO driven to brink of suicide on at least two occasions by WJC and Chelsea driving her to it. If Vince Foster were still around he could sympathize.
That she has to try speaks volumes about her humanity, charitably assuming she has any left.
lucia,
If I was a manger of a foreign intel operation, the best damage would be to release the really corrupt acts that team Hillary was so dedicated to hiding right after her victory. The implications of Ms. Clinton’s failures in depth- mediocre at Senate, failure at State- against her successes- shaking down foreign donors for favors, etc. leaves so many chances for national hurt it boggles the mind….
Hunter, releasing the emails after the election is exactly what the FBI has in mind. America is so divided and distracted right now Russia is likely to make more moves in the lame duck.
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The legacy media has been talking about Trump’s threat to jail his opponent after the election as shocking banana republic type behavior. Having press that acts as a propaganda tool of the state is also a banana republic trait. Clinton attacked him as “not knowing what would happen should Trump be in charge of the laws.” He just called for independent investigation of a corruption and thus had the perfect come back to her:
“You’d be in jail.” Applause broke out since more than half the country would like to see abuses punished and they believe they occur.
lucia (Comment #152174)
“BTW: I still think his two sons look like weasels. And yet Ivanka is very pretty.”
Be nice.
Playing the woman card like Hilary.
The Cheifio said on his blog he would vote for Trump if Trump sent him an Ivanka calendar.
A right wing commentator in Australia thought Trump won the second debate having definitely lost the first.
But he would say that.
Cannot vote so will not get calendar, such a shame.
Brandon, initial post was very informative and pleasant,thank you.
Ron, Trump’s threat to jail his opponent isn’t there. He called for a special prosecutor. As you quoted, he said “You’d be in jail.” not “You’ll be in jail.” It was in response to Hillary’s “if someone of Donald Trump’s temperament were running the Justice Department”
I think Trump is going for maximum stagecraft, putting the opponent on edge.
Carrick, how do you reconcile calling Alicia Machado a “carefully crafted attack” that hurts Trump, with
Hasn’t stopped the Trump campaign from selling Hillary for prison buttons. Stories that have emerged suggest that Trump is about talk and deeds, not just bombast.
On the subpoenaed data:
If Hillary and company received a subpoena for speciofic material which had been in their possession, don’t they have an obligation then to determine whether it still exists? In other words, it looks as though she responded that the material no longer existed because she ordered it destroyed without actually determining whether it HAD been destroyed.
This seems a very risky course since if she said it had been destroyed and it later turned out to not have been destroyed AND she failed to produce it timely she would have been unresponsive to the subpoena.
Something like this seems more likely to have been what happened than what is being claimed. Of course it could have been Cheryl Mills instead of HRC.
WRT to Trump discussing having FBI investigate his opponent, do remember Obama while campaigning in Aprils 2008 said
This is more nuanced than Trumps sound bites, but it amounts to this: while campaigning, Obama was saying he would have use his Justice Department (new administration) to investigate the old administration (held by opposing party).
And in fact, Trump did just that: He did appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the past administration. He wasn’t investigating his precise political opponent for office, but he was investigating the administration of the other party.
Note that in the Trump/Clinton case, Clinton happens to be the specific person in the past administration who one might wish to investigate “properly” (assuming that has not yet been done by the current administration which she was an important part of and whose policies she was implementing.)
While one can certainly say using the justice department against your political opponents is a “Bananna Republic” thing to do, it’s worht nothing: it was done by the current administration.
j ferguson makes an excellent point. There were communications (email for sure, also a conference call) between Clinton’s staff, including Mills, and the IT people after the subpoena was served and before the deletions. So either Mills did not do her job as council or ahe colluded with the IT people or the IT people destroyed the emails after being told not to. I don’t believe the last is credible.
But it was likely Mills, not HRC who actually gave the order.
The difference is that Trump is threatening to jail opponents, not just appoint a special prosecutor, why give him a pass saying it’s all bombast. Bush lawyers also object.
RB–
Yep. Looks like you can buy three buttons for $6 here:https://shop.donaldjtrump.com/products/hillary-for-prison-3-buttons-set-of-3
Regardless of out come of the elections, I think these are sure to be a collectors item!
Ron,
The American people deserve to know what was left from her efforts at destroying evidence. The mental gymnastics of ignoring her multiple lies under oath before Congress, destruction of evidence and pay-for-play during her disastrous service at the State Dept. does not deserve to be brushed aside.
RB,
If Hillary had been in the military and treated government docs the way she did, she would be in jail. If she had been in the intel community, ditto.
Falling for the Clinton narrative is what is making America a banana republic.
And Hillary is going to give us an up close and memorable rendition of Evita, unless we are very fortunate.
RB wrote: “Trump is threatening to jail opponents”.
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That is a lie.
RB,
I watched the debate and I did not interpret his “You’d be in jail.” as a “threat the jail opponents”. I think he
(a) threatened to appoint a special prosecutor,
(b) anticipates the outcome is that the guilty would be jailed and
(c) he thinks Clinton is guilty.
I think (b &c) is what the quip points to. I don’t think he is suggesting that he will suspend the rule of law and thrown her in jail the moment he’s in office. I don’t think he’s suggesting he will suspend the rule of law at all.
It’s a quip. If you want to interpret it differently, you may. But that’s how I interpret what he said.
That’s not really any different from Obama who certainly elaborated and was perfectly willing to send the guilty to jail. The “difference”, is that that in this case, the specific person in the administration who happens to be the one who may have broken laws is precisely the person who is running for office. I don’t see this a making the Trump aspect any more “bananna republic” than the Obama aspect.
But yes, details are different. In this case, Trump is more direct than Obama, and he names the person rather than being general. The named person is the specific member of the administration who might be investigated by the future administration and who some think might have been let off by the current one happens to be the one running. It’s not at all clear that the fact that specific person is running is a reason why they can’t be investigated. Or at least if one thinks it was ok for Obama to investigate less powerful members of the Bush administration, I don’t see the principle that says one can’t investigate the specific one who happened to be more powerful and thenhappened to run for office.
If the principle is that one investigates law breakers thoroughly, and the suspicion is the past administration did something to give its own members a pass, then I don’t think application by Trump is different from that by Obama in any important way. Mind you: it upsets people precisely because they don’t want that person investigated and so on. But both investigations would be direct applications of the principle Obama claimed he was following.
We’re in southern Utah right now. CNN ads, the ones not directed to the elderly are all Trump, none HRC. We’d never before seen any of them. One says that Trump will reduce business tax from 35% to 15%, provide paid leave for births, and reduce income tax of family with $60k income by 20%.
There is also a really funny one which shows Hillary saying she cannot understand why she isn’t leading by 50 points.
something about Les Deplorables.
As an aside, I don’t think we can count on President Trump only saying goofy things, he might actually do some. Of course same can be said about HRC.
j ferguson
I’ve seen that one. And her vocal quality on that doesn’t do her any favors. She sounds like she’s shouting (even though she has a mike) and she sound a little horse– like she’s been shouting a lot.
I suspect she has been wanting to project ‘energy’. Since she isn’t the sort who is quick with quips (Bill was), she can’t do energy that way. So she’s taken the approach of trying to be ‘rousing’. But most people can’t speak “energetically” and “loudly” for a long time without getting hoarse — although, if one is taught vocal support they can develop the ability to avoid hoarseness somewhat because they project with less strain on the chords. But anyway, Hillary ends up sounding a bit hoarse and strained.
Oh– and what may may her get strained even faster is it’s possible she’s intentionally trying to speak in a vocal register that is lower than normal for her chords. I think this is a mistake. Of course one doesn’t want to sound “shrill”. But it seems to me that what hearers perceive as “shrill” is not merely high pitched: it also often contains white noise or has a spectral distribution that is… well… not exactly “flute like”. (Note: Whistles are shrill. Piccolos are not– they are just high pitched.)
I think it better for a politician who works on the stump to actually take elocution lessons and learn to use their own voice properly. (My voice is on the high end. Can I get shrill? Sure. But that’s ‘shrill’ is not the actual normal timber of a sopranos speaking voice.)
She should have taken elocution lessons the year before she ran for Senate. Doubt if she thought of it.
j ferguson wrote: “I don’t think we can count on President Trump only saying goofy things, he might actually do some.”
Trump will have people around him like Pence, Christie, and Gingrich to keep him from doing goofy things. That and the fact that he has been successful in a difficult business tells me that he is no more likely to do goofy things than any other politician.
Some of the statements I’m seeing from Trump supporters about Republican candidates who abandon Trump makes me think they actually want to lose the Senate and the House if Trump doesn’t win. Idiocy. A friend of mine refers to it as a circular firing squad.
Brandon, again I said nothing about magnetic force microscopy, and I have no idea why you keep going on about it. I’ve never said anything about using it or nor do I endorse it for high-end data recovery.
The technique I was discussing involves reading the signal from the head, and recording it at higher resolution. Since he’s basically claiming it’s impossible, it’s amazing that Brandon would write so much and with such apparent authority, and not know basic electronics facts.
There is nothing urban legend about this:
A hard drive head is a typically a one-axis magnetometer oriented either perpendicularly or horizontal to the disk surface. The signal from the head is amplified and conditioned by a preamplifier before it is analyzed and converted into a series of bits (organized into 8-bit bytes + error correction code bits).
So here are the ways you can improve the resolution. These all involve modifying (e.g., by adding a piggy-back board) or replacing the electronic controller board for the hard drive.
• You can increase the bit-resolution depth from 1 bit to 24 bits.
• You can increase the sampling rate, which is equivalent to increasing the spatial resolution along the track. This is important if you want to recover a signal that was partially “stepped on” by a non-perfectly
• You can record fractional tracks, which increases the resolution perpendicular to the nominal track position.
Again the model for data recovery is that a hard drive head doesn’t write over exactly the same exact domains on successive passes. Further, hard drives don’t perfectly polarize the magnetic domains when they write to them. The residual magnetic signal (after a re-write over old data) can be thought of as a type of noise.
As you are reading and writing an error corrected 1-bit signal, basic communication theory tells you want SNR you need to achieve. Overkill reduces the effective density that you can write at, so there are economic reasons for leaving a residual signal.
This is an illustration, which shows the difference between a real track and an ideal circular one. Because of mechanical imperfections and nonlinearities associated with servo movement, the actual track is neither circular nor reproducible from pass-to-pass.
One of the things multiple passes (using random sector overwrite) does fill in the voids on the tracks. Writing random data (followed by its compliment) also helps destroy any residual magnetic signal.
As far as I know only people you should “worry about” trying to recover your data using this method would be the FBI or a major spy forensic laboratory with a large budget. If you’re worried about that, you’ve probably got other problems and aren’t living right.
It used to be possible with older drives to recover the data in a conventional laboratory (e.g., floppy drives). I think that’s where the 35-pass recommendation came from.
It’s my belief that’s complete overkill on a modern hard drive. I concur that single pass is good enough for normal citizens who don’t handle sensitive. It’s what I use myself to flush data of a personal nature (tax or banking information) that I don’t want a hacker to steal.
I agree that Trump will probably try to do some goofy things. He will also likely succeed in doing goofy things.
That said: Hillary will also do things that are at least unwise. Sort of like setting up private servers in her bathroom.
Both of these candidates are scary. Both have shown they are well able to do goofy things. One difference is Hillary won’t announce in advance, “Hey guys. I’m planning to do [insert something as unwise as installing server in bathroom]!” Trump is somewhat more likely to announce he plans to do the goofy thing before he does it.
Carrick,
Considering the price of hard drives, seems it might be simpler to melt the aluminum platter with a propane torch if you want to be absolutely sure. But I have to believe multiple re-writes will make data recovery, by any means, just about impossible.
I’ll say this, I believe that Trump’s threats to lock Hillary up in and outside of the debate will be one of those things that will be remembered for elections to come. Hillary deserved to lose to Obama because she failed at a pivotal moment in her support for the Iraq war. The list for Trump runs very long.
RB,
I agree his statement, and the meme, will be remembered. So is “where’s the beef?” So are all sorts of things.
J ferguson,
I read the FBI report some time ago. I didn’t know at that time about the “side deals” with the FBI to not look at anything after a certain date (a date before the email messages were Bleach-bit’ed). In light of the side agreements, it seems most likely to me that the following happened:
1) Camp Clinton asked for the messages to be destroyed; the technician failed to do that.
2) After Congress asked for the messages to be preserved and produced, the technician had his ‘oh shit’ realization. Rather than just destroy to messages (opening himself up to prosecution), he called Camp Clinton to get direction.
3) Camp Clinton and lawyers told the technician to destroy the messages, which he did, and planned how they would stonewall/enter side agreements/lie/take the fifth, etc. to avoid prosecution for destruction of the messages.
.
To me, this looks like criminal conspiracy arranged by some lawyers such that prosecution would be impossible. It is not the first time I have seen this sort of thing (active involvement of a lawyer in coordinating a criminal conspiracy), nor will it be the first time I have seen such a conspiracy succeed. The ‘above the law’ charge against Camp Clinton, is IMO spot on. The behaviors are consistent over time and over multiple scandals. Will any of them ever be prosecuted? Not an icecube’s chance in Hades.
I agree with DeWitt that the Republicans seem bent on self destruction. A year ago, Senator Portman in Ohio seemed very vulnerable. He came out fairly early for Trump and is now well ahead of a strong opponent. But Toomey in Pennsylvania and Ayotte in New Hampshire have refused to back Trump; their campaigns are in trouble. It appears that they are hurting both Trump and themselves by refusing to back Trump.
The latest round of abandoning Trump will likely hurt not just Trump but the Republicans chances of winning the Senate and House. Madness.
They don’t *want* to lose. But the elites move in their own circles, detached from the unwashed like us. Within those circles, virtue signalling on things like the Trump tape is required if they want to maintain status. And maintaining that status in those circles is far more important than little things like what is good for the party or the country. That is the attitude that has led to the reaction that has been fueling the Trump campaign.
MIkeN: I don’t have any problems bringing up Bill Clinton’s alleged victims. I see that as a very different thing that having them participate in what amounts to a WWF event.
Some people seem to have a very, very low threshold for what they consider appropriate behavior from people who are supposed to be leading our country.
Carrick,
Some people have an awfully high tolerance for criminal conspirators being intimately involved in our Executive branch. I don’t. I had hoped after Nixon was driven from office by a criminal conspiracy to cover crimes that politicians might have learned criminal conspiracy is to be avoided. But it seems what they actually learned was that getting caught in a conspiracy is to be avoided.
Carrick, it is generally considered rude:
To begin by addressing a person then turn around and talk to other people about them. Regardless of that, it is quite cheeky to say you “have no idea why” I’d talk about magnetic force microscopy when I explicitly explained why I talked about it (even while referring to other approaches). Again, it is the most powerful tool for the job, and it cannot allow us to do what you claim can be done.
You can be rude and say I don’t “know basic electronic facts,” but the reality you haven’t pointed to a single thing I’ve said that is wrong. Your only criticism appears to be that you can suggest far less powerful approaches to trying to recover data than the one I discussed, despite me explicitly stating I was discussing it to demonstrate the impossibility of what you describe when using the most powerful tools available. That’s your choice. It’s also your choice to write things like:
While providing absolutely no evidence or reason to believe what you describe can actually work with modern hard drives. It can’t. People who actually work with data recovery know this. I already provided one link to give information on the subject, but here’s another more specific one, where people actually tested the possibility of recovering data. Yes, it did involve the use of an MFM, but again, that’s because MFMs are far more powerful for studying this problem than what you suggest. The point I’ve made multiple times, that you somehow failed to understand, is that if an MFM cannot let us recover data, a less powerful approach will not let us either.
I actually just cut out part of my comment here because there’s no need to get further sidetracked. The point of all this is the idea of data being recovered from any modern hard drive with this sort of approach is an urban legend. You will not find a single case of it being done, and I can provide multiple examples of testing which suggests it cannot be done.
You can continue to write comments about how I don’t know basic facts (without pointing to anything I’ve said that is wrong) and explain the theoretical underpinnings which nobody has denied, but the simple reality is drive density has increased so much data remnants are unrecoverable even when using the most powerful tools we have available. and since you’ve decided to be rude, let me close this with a throwback to how the discussion began:
As you suggested, I am more knowledgable about this than you, and I can correct you for being overly naive. It just won’t do any good because my correction went the opposite way of what you were expecting.
SteveF:
If he did that, he’d be guilty of federal crimes. It’s hard for me to imagine anybody who isn’t a direct Clinton employee would be that loyal, that they’d be willing to go to jail for her.
The way I see it, is people do stupid things. It explains most human behavior. I think that’s a lot more parsimonious here.
But I also think the fact he deleted the emails and Team Clinton was apparently unaware of it, is evidence of a typical lack of follow through from Team Clinton. Where you probably see Clinton as somebody who is constantly and willfully duplicitous, I see her as actually less duplicitous and deceitful than is typical of politicians because of the scrutiny she gets. We just see more from her, because she’s under a constant spotlight.
I honestly think her big problem is she’s just not competent. She has all of these great plans written out at microscopic detail. But the real world doesn’t work that way and you simply can’t script things out. Not when you need political cooperation to get anything passed.
The details you need to be sweating is how you’re going to be building coalitions. I don’t see know-how of that sort coming from Clinton. She parses numbers with the best of us and can rattle off statistics to the nearest percent (with Trump, if he gets within 50% he’s doing better than usual), but I she lacks the political intelligence needed to get any of any value accomplished. As Trump says correctly (in the sense of a stopped watch), with Clinton it’s all going to be just talk.
Brandon, I’ve seen Wright’s work before. He basically gets it wrong. He knows microscopy, sure, digital signal analysis not so much.
Given you asserted that what amounts to higher resolution than 1-bit is impossible, and you’re still discussing that little bit you apparently read from the BleachBit discussion board and that you’ve googled since then, sorry but discussing this with you is a waste of time.
Brandon, as to this:
I was discussing conventional data recovery methods, you undoubtably know more than I do about this. If you are thinking I believe your physics & engineering knowledge is better than mine, then you’re mistaken.
I’m happy to concede when I’m not knowledgable about something. I wonder why you have such problems.
angech:
Glad to hear. Data recovery is an intriguing subject. It’s just a subject where the general perception is more akin to mysticism than science. Unfortunately, that’s true of a lot of things in the IT world. A great example of this can be found in the comment of mine Carrick has chosen to ignore where I point out he faults the IT staff at the Department of State for not capturing and archiving Hillary Clinton’s e-mails sent from a private server. Short of using black magic, people managing servers are going to find it impossible to archive e-mails that never go through their servers.
Anyway, I don’t think it’s likely there will be much more for me to say here. I’d be happy to discuss more IT issues, but there doesn’t seem to be much point. I guess I’ll just get back salvaging everything off this old laptop drive whose MFT* got corrupted. I know it’s my fault for being lazy and not hooking up an UPS, but I didn’t expect power to go out in the middle of the day and shut down my computer.
Yes, that is my way of pointing out this is the sort of thing I both have to do and know about. It’s also my way of griping about the fact in 2016 we don’t have protections against unexpected drive removal/power loss. There is no reason for an MFT to be lost just because of power going out!
*Master file table. It’s basically a directory listing everything that’s on the drive.
SteveF:
I don’t think very many people want people in the Executive branch who are criminal conspirators. Simply because a commenter on WSJ is accusing somebody of criminal conspiracy, doesn’t make them one though. So the question is how do we determine who’s involved in criminal conspiracies in a politically charged environment, without engaging in witch hunts ourselves, other than entrusting in our federal institutions to do “the right thing” within their obvious finite capacity for that.
Carrick,
Did you read the FBI report?
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The technician was given immunity by the department of justice, and told the FBI that he did in fact destroy the messages, even though he was fully aware of the requirement to preserve them. There is also now clear evidence he had been in contact with Clinton’s lawyers before he proceeded. The date of that communication, shockingly enough, was after the date the FBI agreed (the side agreements) to not look at any evidence on the laptop computers handed over by Clinton’s assistants. Said laptops have now been destroyed (I believe also part of the ‘side agreements’). Finally, despite his immunity deal on destruction of the messages, he took the fifth before Congress…. probably because his immunity did not cover anything except the illegal destruction of the messages.
SteveF:
It’s seems unlikely that a lawyer is going to send instructions to knowingly do something unlawful. That’s why you consult lawyers.
But in any case, can you link what you’re talking about?
Given that Gowdy is involved in a witch hunt, something many Republicans admit to, I don’t blame the guy for taking the fifth. I would also.
Carrick, you may find it fun or whatever to say things like:
But when all you’re doing is going, “Nuh-uh,” I don’t think many people will be convinced. They certainly won’t have anything to discuss. Especially not when your comments are filled with rudeness, like:
I have never said anything like what you claim, and you have no basis for your suggestion I’m going off only what I learned “from the BleachBit discussion board and that [I’ve] googled since then.” The reality is I’ve never visited any BleachBit forum, and everything I’ve said here I’ve known without needing to use Google. The only person here who has depended upon Google is you, with your approach for convincing people what you say is true being, “Google it.”
This is complete BS. I’ve never suggested I know more about physics or engineering than you. I know I don’t. That’s why I haven’t focused on those topics any more than I’ve needed to, intentionally shying away from those subjects I don’t know well. Your response here is nothing but a pathetic strawman.
You can keep choosing to respond like this if you want, but aside from rudeness and strawman arguments, you aren’t contributing anything to the discussion. Maybe people will find you convincing despite that. I can’t help it if so. What I can do is repeat one fundamental point anyone can see:
Nobody has ever recovered data from a modern hard drive in the way you claim can be done. You claim it can be done, yet there isn’t a single example of it in existence. I’d like to think that is a more compelling point than any rudeness you might throw out.
Carrick wrote: “It’s seems unlikely that a lawyer is going to send instructions to knowingly do something unlawful. That’s why you consult lawyers.”
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Really? You think that no mafia mouthpiece is ever involved in anything illegal, just because they are lawyers?
Cheryl Mills is a long time Clinton insider, going back to 1993, when she was not long out of law school. So far as I know, she does not have an independent law practice; she works for Clinton, period. And not just as a lawyer; she was Clinton’s chief of staff at state. Her loyalty is to Clinton,not the law.
Mike M.,
I was thinking the same thing. The idea that involving a lawyer with something is implicit evidence that there’s no criminal conspiracy in that something is a bit of a stretch for me. I don’t buy it.
Carrick: “Some people seem to have a very, very low threshold for what they consider appropriate behavior from people who are supposed to be leading our country.”
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The increasing coincidental similarities with banana republic type images did not start with Trump’s “threatening to jail opponents.” What the legacy media is not conveying is that a large portion of the country feels there is a growing disconnect between the citizenry and and elite. Trump’s pledge to appoint an independent counsel to do a proper investigation fits in with his plank of returning law and order to our immigration, inner cities and the well connected, ex. the Clintons. I would say this is the primary reason he stood above the other GOP candidates, the regular folk believe he has the personal fortitude to do some long-needed house cleaning.
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Trump is crude and was not my pick but I am one of those millions that would like to see our FBI and IRS above corruption, which they are now certainly not.
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RB, SteveF is correct, even if Trump wins there is not a snowballs chance in Hades HRC will see prosecution. At most we might learn more facts of the extent of hers and Obama’s corruption. Lame duck Obama will give many questionable pardons as did lame duck Clinton. Bill’s misuse of the pardon along with their vandalism of Air-force One and the WH grabbing souvenirs is what I will always remember.
Mike M, generally the purpose of consulting lawyers is to tell you how to do something legally. If you aren’t planning on doing it legally, why would you consult a lawyer, especially somebody you don’t have lawyer-client privilege with?
mark bofill:
You seem to be turning it on its head though. Normally when you consult lawyers it’s to avoid law breaking. Certainly other interpretations are possible, just not probable. You guys seen to be using evidence of contact with a lawyer he doesn’t even have a professional relationship with as evidence of malfeasance. That’s crackers.
Carrick,
Ok, that’s not what I meant. The lawyer involvement is not evidence of malfeasance to me. It is not evidence that there is not a criminal conspiracy to me. It’s not evidence one way or the other.
I must have misunderstood what you were saying here to SteveF. I thought you were saying, in that context, that because the tech had been in touch with the lawyers that it was unlikely that the lawyers had advised the tech to do something criminal. That it was unlikely because they were lawyers. I don’t think that follows, but I guess that wasn’t what you were saying.
Thanks, and sorry for the confusion.
Were they the tech’s lawyers, or Clinton’s lawyers? Who’s interests are we supposing these lawyers are bound to protect?
Carrick wrote: “generally the purpose of consulting lawyers is to tell you how to do something legally.”
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No, that is why honest people consult independent council. Had the tech gone to an independent lawyer, as Mark suggests, it would have been for that purpose. When you talk to your employer’s internal council, you are just covering your ass: “The lawyer told me … and I acted on that in good faith.” And dishonest people (that would be Clinton, if you are wondering) rely on captive council (Mills) to keep from getting caught or, if caught, to keep from getting convicted. Mills appears to have earned her pay.
Ron Graf,
The MSM has written about the disconnect. I agree that the white working class base of Trump is concerned about immigration and free trade/globalization which are not served by the GOP’s libertarian policies or the immigration policies of the Democrats. Trump has been able to successfully tap into their sense of identity and they have nothing to lose with him.
Oh. My questions might have appeared to be rhetorical above. They were not intended to be.
Carrick,
I am pretty sure the technician told the FBI that he had a conference call with “President Clinton’s staff” (the Clinton Foundation) on or about the 25th of March, and he wiped the files within a day or two of that conversation, even though he was aware of the preserve order. I am unaware of any reason for that conversation save for that his employer (Platt River Networks) hosted Hillary’s emails. I would suggest that you read the FBI report if you have not already. In light of the now disclosed concurrent immunity and side deal arrangements, the FBI report tells a little different story.
Carrick,
“If you aren’t planning on doing it legally, why would you consult a lawyer, especially somebody you don’t have lawyer-client privilege with?”
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To figure out what evidence would be incriminating, along with other similar things. Of course, once you agree to pay the lawyer for his/her time, I’m pretty sure attorney/client privilege is already in force. What motivated the technician to scrub the emails, in spite of knowing they were under subpoena? We don’t know, and he refuses to testify.
SteveF,
I suppose it is possible that during the conference call the technician was asked “All those messaged have been scrubbed, haven’t they?” and answered “yes” while thinking “uh-oh”.
I am not sure that really makes a difference, since it still would have been Mills’s responsibility to make sure that anything that had not been deleted stayed undeleted.
Out of fairness like I always try to do, and admittedly a bit out of pettiness, I feel like I should point out I’ve written a post somewhat related to the above discussion:
http://www.hi-izuru.org/blog/2016/10/pettiness-and-clinton/
I had actually started writing that post a week ago, but I decided it was too petty. This week, I’m okay with a bit of pettiness though.
Carrick: “Mike M, generally the purpose of consulting lawyers is to tell you how to do something legally. If you aren’t planning on doing it legally, why would you consult a lawyer, especially somebody you don’t have lawyer-client privilege with?”
….
You would consult with the lawyer as to the best method to commit the crime and cover your tracks. Sometimes you would consult with lawyers to do something unethical but not technically illegal. (Think of the Clintons high paid talks to business people, where they have been paid approximately $150,000,000) It is illegal for lawyers to assist in the commission of crimes, but it certainly happens not infrequently. Clinton is the Rembrandt of lying and corruption, and she would know where to go to get what she is looking for.
….
Also, if Clinton was acting ethically and professionally, she would have made sure that the emails weren’t destroyed when there was a court order to preserve them. Very specific directives should have gone out to those who were maintaining them. Either she was incompetent for not maintaining them or she concocted a fake story to make sure they were destroyed. It is easy to imagine a situation where the emails were so damaging that she would take the risk of getting caught destroying the emails as opposed to the contents of the emails coming out.
JD
Cheryl Mills is not Hillary’s lawyer. This is a claim being made to make an (likely invalid) assertion of attorney-client privilege.
Brandon, with regards to State Department not preserving e-mails that don’t go thru their server, Carrick was referring to issues of State Department not preserving e-mails that do go thru their servers. There were two separate systems, and one of them required recipients to flag for archiving.
Mike M,
Why would you think that Trump would listen to those guys? The evidence abounds that he takes only his own counsel and maybe his kids.
Of the three guys you list, I think both Gingrich and Christie have shown the capability to do goofy things. And Trump clearly doesn’t listen to pence.
MikeN:
I’m afraid this isn’t true on any account. First, Carrick in no way limited his comment to e-mails sent through the DoS servers. He clearly referred to Clinton’s e-mails as a whole. Moreover, none of Clinton’s e-mails were sent through the DoS servers. The only way they would have wound up on the DoS network is if they happened to be sent to or from a DoS account.* Some were, but many were not.
Second, there were not two “separate systems” for archiving. The DoS archiving process was actually to print off e-mails and put them in filing cabinets. There was a computerized system one could store e-mails in, the SMART system, but that was an opt-in feature designed to allow people to share communication with other people. It was never designed, intended or used for meeting the department’s archival requirements.
I’m not sure what second system you have in mind. If it is the Capstone system, I should mention the caveat Capstone isn’t really a system, but rather a philosophical approach. One could design a system based on it though, so I suspect that’s a distinction most people won’t care about. What they should care about is Capstone is a new-ish approach that was not in use during Clinton’s tenure.
*As in, either Clinton would have to e-mail someone at the DoS or someone at the DoS would have to e-mail her. Relying on that for archival purposes would be like saying it’s okay for Clinton not to archive her e-mails because when she e-mails the White House, the White House saves those e-mails. That’s not how it works.
For those who might be a little surprised that lawyers would assist in committing crimes or engage in unethical behavior, I would suggest that they read this article that summarizes the cases of about 12 judges that committed crimes in Cuyahoga County Ohio (Cleveland). http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/08/judges_before_the_bar_of_justi.html
The worst to me was Judge McGettrick (a former sheriff) who took bribes to let murder defendants off.
You could also check out James Barbuto, “a former Summit County prosecutor, common pleas and probate court judge who was convicted in a [Summit] county corruption scandal in 1980.” http://www.ohio.com/news/top-stories/james-barbuto-former-summit-prosecutor-convicted-in-scandal-dead-at-age-91-1.238635
JD
RB: “The MSM has written about the disconnect…Trump has been able to successfully tap into their sense of identity and they have nothing to lose with him.”
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I agree the MSM identifies the Trump support as an identity Hillary labeled “deplorables.” The MSM is slightly more PC, valuing potential viewers.The dems/progressives have a basket they can put the cause of every world ill into: non-handicapped, non-gay, non-minority, non-females, and any person should they mention the constitution.
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Trump supporters represent the backlash against identity politics. When Obama or Hillary lectures on divisiveness and ideological inflexibility half the country throws up in their mouth.
JD Ohio,
“For those who might be a little surprised that lawyers would assist in committing crimes or engage in unethical behavior…”
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I for one am certainly not among those folks. I have personally witnessed a corporate lawyer coordinating a conspiracy to hide criminal wrong-doing.
Lucia, after becoming President, Kennedy and his VP who succeeded him audited their opponent in the election.
Reading Nixon’s autobiography he apologizes for Watergate but not for his other actions against political enemies because he considered it how things were done.
Mike M.
The standard line is that all politics is local. It’s not at all clear that Portman was helped by supporting Trump early. There could easily be a whole raft of local issues that played a larger role. Nor is the lack of support for Trump by Toomey and Ayotte necessarily the reason why those candidates are in trouble. Correlation is not causation.
Trump can hurt himself without any help from anyone else.
Whatever
mmmm, Rabbet pellets!
Tasty!
:p
The rabbit’s pellets just show incredible ignorance of history. Teddy Roosevelt was certainly as “bigoted” as Trump and intensely hated by the “malefactors of great wealth” and Democrats alike. Roosevelt called people “yellow” and “cowards” and worse. By modern standards Teddy was a war monger and an unabashment American nationalist. These are just his public utterances. Yet Teddy was incredibly popular as president because he connected with common people. He was running against a corrupt and in some ways evil establishment. And he did indeed implement important reforms that made life better for common people. Hillary Clinton represents the current political, cultural, and business establishment. If the establishment is bankrupt and corrupt, she is as well. Rabbit’s apparently like this establishment just fine as they continue to get their quota of rabbit food as long as they toe the party line.
I didn’t see anyone pick up on a basic truth in Trump’s sex-talk tape, that IF you are famous, especially rich and famous, you can do anything you want. There needs to be an understood “to somebody” in there so it isn’t taken to mean you can abuse “anybody”. I cite two stereotypical examples. One, rock stars have groupies. Some women, not all women. Two, the rich and famous can find a “good” lawyer to convinve the jury that “she’s a liar”, “it’s her fault”, “she’s trash”, and so on. If he had said that instead of bragging it it could have been a positive thing for his campaign, assuming of course that he also proposed to fix that problem.
Quote from Eli cited link: “He [Trump] is the actual and physical embodiment of every single thing the GOP has trained its base to want and to be over the last forty years — ignorant, bigoted and money-grubbing, disdainful of facts and frightened of everything because of it, an angry drunk buzzed off of wood-grain patriotism, threatening brown people and leering at women. He was planned. He was intended. He was expected. He was wanted.”
….
The Left is really good at spewing hate (Clinton’s deplorable comment, for example) but very short on results or facts. Today the NYTs was whining about “Do We Have to Go Low, Too?” Of course, a recent article was entitled “Donald Trump, Groper in Chief”, and Charles Blow had a column entitled “Trump, Grand Wizard of Birtherism” The Left is insular, self-righteous, fact-free, and intolerant.
….
At least on the right, some people oppose Trump. The Left, on the hand is united in support of Clinton who is 100% dishonest and corrupt. While the Left has managed to focus attention on Trump’s salacious remarks, virtually no one is discussing Clinton’s casual remark that Assange should be killed. Shows where the Left’s priorities and morals are.
JD
I forgot to include the press in the current establishment. Just as in the 19 century, they are partisan and collude with their political and business allies who use them to buy elections. Rockefeller, Morgan, and Carnegie did essentially buy the election of 1900. They intimidated their workers with threats of plant closures and spent a huge sum of money by the standards of the time. But an assassin’s bullet felled their boy and their worst nightmare, who they thought would be relegated to the powerless office of vice president, became president.
Wow the stupid rabbit thinks Donald Trump is in a competition with Syrian dictator Assad for the worst leader in the world. Humm… Assad uses chemical weapons against his own people, bombs hospitals, schools, etc. And Trump says things that, well, really upset the sensibilities of leftist intellectuals. Yup, the equivalence is obvious, at least to mindless rabbits. Who says educated educators can’t be profoundly and incredibly stupid? Not me.
I’ve always puzzled as to why communism was left and fascism was right. If one thinks about it they are both “new order” progressive ideologies that aim to supplant traditional religion and custom with an invention that deifies the movement. It’s not good enough to leave people to their pursuits, they must be controlled and re-educated with the new enlightenment — but not through civil debate, but by banning books, speakers and thoughts.
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Ronald Reagan I suspect had the same idea when he said, “There is no left and right, only up and down.”
“Who says educated educators can’t be profoundly and incredibly stupid? Not me.”
Nor me.
In other news, clinton campaign manager John Podesta apparently believes aliens (space aliens, not Mexicans) have visited Earth in UFOs. Hillary must be getting some excellent advice on UFO’s.
Ron Graf (#152348) –
Collapsing ideologies onto a single axis necessarily loses information. Consider a multi-dimensional view, such as the Nolan chart or the Pournelle chart.
The lewd Trump comments from 2005 could have been easily released to the public during primary season, but Trump got a lot of undeserved hype instead.
It’s just another indication of how contrived this entire presidential campaign has been.
Political parties and media are just presenting theatre. We don’t get to vote for real candidates anymore.
Andrew
JD wrote: “At least on the right, some people oppose Trump. The Left, on the hand is united in support of Clinton … Shows where the Left’s priorities and morals are.”
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Spot on. The left is fine with lawlessness in pursuit of their ends, since their ends are so noble. In my book, that makes the left a serious threat to freedom and makes Clinton a lot scarier than Trump. So not only can I not vote for Clinton, I think that I must vote against her.
Harold: “Collapsing ideologies onto a single axis necessarily loses information.”
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The important polarity is between freedom and authoritarianism. For the adjudication of all the other beliefs and values depend on them.
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Many “liberals” have a “conservative” resistance on particular issues, such as nuclear energy, genetically modified food and space exploration/colonization. The political party loyalty is must be 90% tribalism. This is the only explanation for so many sharing identical views on such a vast number of topics.
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I agree the scariest thing is what behavior we give a pass to when from “our” side but would stone to death coming from the other.
Brandon:
MikeN is correct. I was referring to emails sent from or received by State Department server. That is, emails where either sender or a recepient was in the State Department. Even I’m not that stupid.
MikeN:
Yes we did discuss this too.
SMART and CAPSTONE.
I also referred to the OIG report, which is a better source than anything I tried to paraphrase.
https://oig.state.gov/system/files/esp-16-03.pdf
Carrick:
It is interesting that interpretation doesn’t fit the context of the discussion or your own words. For instance, we can see this text I quoted wouldn’t make any sense given your explanation:
The primary reason Clinton is suffering in regard to this issue is she used a private server to send and receive e-mails separate from the DoS network. The DoS IT staff has nothing to do with the outcome of that. Clinton couldn’t have possibly “entrusted her political career” to people who didn’t have anything to do with the e-mails. Similarly, you wrote:
Stating if the DoS IT staff had properly archived e-mails received by Clinton, “much of this controversy wouldn’t exist.” That’s not what you now claim to have said, and it’s clearly wrong as the DoS IT staff couldn’t possibly have archived e-mails received by Clinton on her private server.
Your claim as to what you said doesn’t match the context of the discussion or the words you wrote. You can defend it by saying, “I’m not that stupid,” but at the same point in that conversation you wrote that the Executive Secretariat is made up of permanent staff responsible for the day-to-day operations of the DoS in order to provide an independent check on political appointees – every word of which is not only false but completely divorced from reality.
I won’t claim to speak for your intelligence. All I’ll do is explain what you said and point out when it is completely nonsensical.
This is an interesting comment by Carrick:
The OIG report he refers to is a good source, one anyone interested in this subject should be famliar with. Strangely though, despite referencing and linking to it, Carrick contradicts it. When challenged on his ideas about the DoS not keeping records,* he wrote:
The OIG report he references gives a very different portrayal. Notably, they make the same point I’ve made several times, that the DoS didn’t use any sort of electronic media while Clinton was Secretary of State:
To fulfill its archiving obligations. They printed all e-mails they kept. As such, any discussion of the SMART system is largely irrelevant. The Capstone approach is certainly irrelevant. As the OIG report observes:
Clinton stopped being Secretary of State near the beginning of 2013, more than half a year before the Capstone system was even authorized and approximately two years before the Capstone system went online.
There might be reasons to discuss these systems, such as examining how things like this scandal can be avoided in the future, but any discussion of them in relation to archiving and Clinton’s e-mails is misleading unless one clearly points out neither system was being used for archival purposes while Clinton was Secretary of State.
*I’m not aware of anything in the OIG report which supports his claims on this matter. Perhaps Carrick could quote what he believes supports the things he says.
SteveF:
“Thirty-six percent of Americans, about 80 million people, believe UFOs exist, and a tenth believe they have spotted one, a new National Geographic poll shows.”
From 2012. I actually thought those numbers were higher. Of course, there’s no guaranteed anyone answers surveys truthfully.
Presumably if the aliens were to blame for the hacks, there’d be no evidence, ‘cos they’re much smarter at that stuff than we Earthlets.
Jit, one of the weird things in Independence Day is they treat Randy Quaid like a loon because he speaks of his being abducted by aliens many years ago. However, this happened right after aliens have visited the planet!
MikeN, an unpublished MS of mine has a similar conceit. Not so original on my part perhaps, but the whole thing is an homage to War of the Worlds. I’ve only seen Independence Day once – vaguely remember Jeff Goldblum somehow connecting his lappy to the alien mothership. Haven’t seen the remake.
SteveF, if you are interested into taking a look into the subject sometime I would start with start with this. In 1951 Captain Edward Ruppelt was transferred from Wright Patterson’s program studying the engineering of the MIG15 and charged with reorganizing the Air-force’s then shoddy investigation on UFOs, called Project Grudge. Ruppelt expanded it 10X and renamed it Project Blue Book. He did a serious investigation into a very serious national security matter at the time. Ruppelt was given access to all levels and branches of the military and traveled to many highly sensitive bases where the events would often occur. He coined the tern “Unidentified Flying Object.” Two things he was not told about: Project Sign and the Roswell incident, which was the likely initiator of Sign. Ruppelt did discover Sign’s top secret report that concluded the extraterrestrial explanation was the most likely. That report created a backlash that led to Grudge that was an un-serious and cynical effort until Ruppelt. I could never find evidence that Ruppelt knew of Roswell. He resigned after a secret conference known as the Robertson Panel decided to convert Blue Book into a public relations effort to re-assure the public there was nothing to UFOs. Ruppelt wrote his tell-all book in 1956 but couldn’t get in published in the USA, blocked by the National Security Act. After some revision he got published in 1960 but died within weeks of heart attack at age 37.
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The Scientific adviser for the Robertson Panel was J. Allen Hynek, who went on to work for Blue Book, explaining most all sightings with conventional explanations, whether they made any sense at all or not, essentially prostituting his academic credentials for hire. In 1966 the Michigan Flap included a sighting made by then Congressman Gerald R Ford, who called the first and last hearing on UFOs in July 1968. Hynek was brought under subpoena to answer for his explaining as “swamp gas” the sighting Ford himself had shared with hundreds of his fellow MI residents. Under oath Hynek shocked all by making an about-face admission that a vast number of sightings were not explained and he recommended there be a robust scientific effort to study UFOs. Hynek was immediately fired by Blue Book which at the same time was organized to close by the Condon Committee.
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Hynek would devote the rest of his life trying the organized scientifc study of UFO’s and founded the Center for UFO Studies. He created the “close encounters” scale and received a cameo in the Movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1977 shortly before his death.
This is why I asked before whether you have verified any of the info.
Gerald Ford in 1968 was House Minority Leader and would not have been heading any committees or subcommittees. I don’t even think party leaders are committee members.
Other links say that Ford called for hearings, but never got them.
So it turns out that the one poll that was consistently Trump-supportive (and even that changed today), was being skewed by one 19-year old man .
Ron,
I’m fond of the explanation of UFO sightings in Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: They’re teasers. The full quote is here:
http://www.saunalahti.fi/~huuhilo/dna1.html
The problem with the alien theory of UFO’s is that it would require they have some sort of FTL drive. I think that’s even less likely than LENR. The rest is X-Files level fantasy. And even the X-Files never had a coherent explanation. There was always some deeper level conspiracy.
Ron Graf,
Hillary thinks believing in UFOs is OK, so maybe you could get a job in her administration.
And the trap that Anderson Cooper laid for Trump snares him . Perhaps he was right about there being no cure for perverts.
SteveF,
On the likelihood that the truth isn’t what we’re being told about how the subpoena was reacted to, I wouldn’t be at all surprised that the way we see it is the way the FBI saw it. But they couldn’t muster the evidence or induce the testimony – maybe because they didn’t want to.
On the other hand, i have two direct experiences with the authorities being unable to pin a felony on someone who clearly had done the thing through lack of evidence. And this is without motivation to not charge.
Ron Graf,
But seriously, the chance of finding life of some kind on planets within few tens of light years could be significant, and there are probably hundreds of potentially habitable plants within a few tens of light years where life may have evolved. But UFOs require technologically capable intelligent life which is able to sustain itself over the many thousands of years that travel over tens of light years would require. We know only that the first technologically capable life on Earth arose ~ 3.5 billion years after life was first evident… So we can be reasonably confident that level of development is unlikely to be fast. What we don’t know is if technologically capable life is able to sustain itself over extended periods (millions or billions of years) or if it regresses and loses techological capability, or even becomes extinct. I would not put the chance of alien UFO’s as low as cold fusion (which is only infinitesimally larger than zero), but it seems to me the chance is exceedingly small. And far too small to make thousands of UFO sightings credible.
j ferguson,
You may be right that there was no path for the FBI to recommend prosecution; and prosecution by the Justice Department seems very unlikely in any case, no matter what the FBI found. Many at the FBI, and probably Comey himself, see Trump as so odious that they have zero desire to pursue Hillary. In any case, I think there is prima facia evidence of conspiracy, destruction of subpoened evidence, and, of course, unlawful handeling of classified data. Will they all avoid prosecution? Of course they will.
Carrick, was Congress aware of Platte River Networks? The New York Times article describing the personal e-mail doesn’t mention it. Hillary’s public statement at the time said the server was at her house, and she makes use of the fact that it was guarded by Secret Service, when actually it was in someone’s bathroom.
Many people mocked this defense, but I thought it was relevant security-wise.
Clinton told the FBI that she did was not involved in deciding whether individual emails should be sent to State Department, nor “did she instruct anyone to delete her emails to avoid complying with FOIA, State or FBI requests for information.”
Interesting this sentence does not mention a Congressional request for information.
Reading the subpoena request made by Congress to Hillary Clinton, is it legal to demand documents be produced in a particular format?
Correction: There were two hearings on UFOs. The first was in 1966 after the Michigan Flap and was initiated by Gerald Ford. The second was July 1968. Carl Sagan was one of the witnesses for that one. Hynek was the only witness who testified in both hearings.http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc1981.htm
SteveF, how can you not believe in unidentified flying objects? It only means one doesn’t know what they saw. This is why Hynek created the classification system to define the level of claim:
http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc1552.htm
1) NOCTURNAL LIGHT
Any anomalous light(s) seen in the night sky whose description rules out the possibilities of aircraft lights, stars, meteors and the like.
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2) DAYLIGHT DISK UFOs
seen in the distant daytime sky. The UFOs classed in this category can be other shapes as well, like cigars, eggs and ovals.
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3) RADAR-VISUALS
Where UFOs are tracked on radar and can be seen at the place illustrated at the same time.
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CLOSE ENCOUNTERS…
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4) OF THE FIRST KIND (CEI)
A UFO in close proximity (within approx 500 feet) of the witness.
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5) OF THE SECOND KIND (CEII)
A UFO that leaves markings on the ground, causes burns or paralysis to humans, frightens animals, interferes with car engines or TV and radio reception.
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6) OF THE THIRD KIND (CEIII)
A CEI or CEII which have visible occupants.
There are also two more unofficial classes of Close Encounter…
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7) OF THE FOURTH KIND (CEIV)
Abduction cases.
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8) OF THE FIFTH KIND (CEV)
Communication occurs between a person and an alien.
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SteveF, 20 years ago it was unhelpful for a career in science to even speculate on other intelligent life in the universe. I’ve always scoffed at such stigmas. I want to know what’s possible and that is rarely what the consensus says is possible. Humankind will either be a space faring, star traveling life form within 1000 years or we will a small chance of still existing. I opt for the optimistic view and truly think it’s the more likely.
Ruppelt wrote investigated mainly type 3 and 4 cases in 1951-53.
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One of the Air-force’s most famous cases was a type 5 in Woodbridge Bentwaters joint military bases in Suffolk, UK on nights of December 26 and 28 of 1980. nights. The first night involved a landing where a landed ship with writing on it was touched by a security patrolmen, Sergeant Jim Penniston an witnessed by his partner John Burroughs. The second night flying craft with beams that probed the nuclear warhead bunkers was witnessed by scores of servicemen, including the deputy base commander, colonel Charles Halt, who recorded much of the patrol on audio tape. Holt’s report getting out from a FOIA years later is what brought the case to the public. All three servicemen stand behind there belief to this day that what the saw was extraterrestrial.
Ron, do you have a link to a transcript, or even any evidence these hearings took place?
Hynek’s page on Wikipedia makes no mention of Gerald Ford or any recanting of testimony about swamp gas. The sources you have given do not look credible, and are contradicting each other. You have gone from one hearing to two, and another site says zero.
Mike N, here is the transcripts of all the 1968 hearings, including Sagan and Hynek.
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Here is Ford’s documents calling for the first hearings:
https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0054/4525586.pdf
Ron Graf:
That everyone should believe in “UFOs” is obvious because we’ve all seen something in the sky that we couldn’t identify. That’s why the survey I quoted above was at least imprecise. 36% of Americans believe in UFOs? Hardly. 36% of Americans believe our skies are visited by alien craft? Closer. (Still relies on respondents telling the truth.)
The actual chance that our skies are visited by alien craft is vanishingly small. So where does the 36% come from? I find myself forced to believe that people lie to the surveyor. To think that a third of people in a highly-educated country could genuinely believe that is, er, unthinkable.
On the plus side, hopefully this thread is now providing material for another paper by a certain infamous scientist. (I believe in UFOs! I do! Yes! I welcome our new twelve-eyed overlords!)
Ron Graf,
Multiply the probabilities: Habitable planet, life develops, an intelligent form emerges, there exist conditions for technological development (eg some dry surface), the technological development doesn’t lead to extinction, this all happens somewhere reasonably close to Earth (tens of light years). jit has it right: minuscule chance.
Jit (Comment #152361
“Thirty-six percent of Americans, about 80 million people, believe UFOs exist, and a tenth believe they have spotted one, a new National Geographic poll shows.â€
Hmm 8 million people have spotted one.
Have I?
No.
But trying to think if I have is a bit like trying to recall a dream, it just fades away.
Maybe that men in black thingie is working overtime.
200 commentators here, suggests 8 people should have seen a UFO.
I don’t mean just a type of plane or Frisbee one is unfamiliar with.
I do live near Moyhu and Mt Beauty in Australia so they might have landed here in the past and left some intrepid sou[ls] behind.
I liked that the evidence of intelligent life in the universe is that they have not contacted us.
“Jit has it right: minuscule chance.”
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This was the official opinion as voiced by Carl Sagan’s in 1968. The opinion was the same about life on Mars. In the forty-eight years since the official odds have increased a thousand fold for life on Mars and for intelligent life in the universe. Meanwhile the observational evidence (data) that needs to be discarded continues to accumulate.
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There is no question almost all world governments had been confronted with “the problem” between 1945 and today. Almost all independently came to the same conclusion: whatever UFOs are the government needs to know before allowing the public to know. Public outcry and maturing society has led to many governments to declassify a lot of what was previously secret.
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Using the logic that the universe makes it impossible to transport faster than light but that the odds of intelligent life forming are high means that we are cosmic cell mates with other civilizations that can signal each other with essentially smoke signals that take years to go back and forth. After 40 years of looking, SETI has not found any smoke signals. But we have found Earth-like planets, including in our closest neighboring star.
So Trump “moved on them like a bitch” and “groped them like an octopus” and the Trump campaign threatens to go “buck wild”. October is full of surprises. Next up will be Trump filing lawsuits so that he can hit the campaign trail saying they are all spreading lies.
“moved on them like a bitch.”
Has anyone who reads here ever read or heard this phrase before, or could parse it?
That’s how alpha males talk.
I would have thought that an alpha male didn’t need to talk like that. What ever happened to “strong silent type?”
Jferguson,
Trump is an oinking pig. If I hadn’t already decided to vote for Johnson, I would be changing my vote now. I don’t imagine I’ll change my vote on election day. (Maybe I should go in for early voting and get it over with!)
For your questions: I’ve never before heard the phrase “moved on the like a bitch”.
Ron Graf:
Searching for Nasa in google (wanted to look at the logo; my daughter’s doing a project), I discovered today under “news” that a “walled city” has been found on Mars. Reading further some boffin also says that there is evidence of interplanetary war on the surface! It’s not April 1st, is it? (The Sun, the newspaper in question, is a tad unreliable. It was the one our family took, and probably has a reading age of twelve – at least the paper version did in the 80s, not sure about now as haven’t seen it in 30 years!)
Lucia,
Yup. Not me though. I too have already decided which hand basket I’m going to hell in; I’m voting Trump.
Lucia
I always thought there was a different interpretation when Nigel Farage said he’s a “big silverback gorilla”
Lucia: “Trump is an oinking pig”
I understand the revulsion with respect to Trump, who is a classless lowlife. However, what I don’t understand is why so little attention is paid to Clinton’s statement about droning Assange. If she becomes President, she will be in a position to kill him and other inconvenient people. There is a significant chance she will kill innocent people for her own personal gain. (At the very least, she has no moral convictions that would prevent her from killing) Could you give me your take on this?
JD
JD,
She’s horrible too. But the reason I’m commenting on Trump being a pig today is that women stepped forward last night.
Hillary is horrible. Horrible. And no, I don’t buy that her “drone Assange” comment was really just a joke. Nope. The woman is a corrupt self serving sow who will do or use almost anything in her power to ‘get’ people who she considers her personal enemies. Or even just those who inconveniences her. She should not be a head of state. Either should Trump.
The next four years are going to be dangerous no matter which of the two swine are elected.
“…droning Assange”
Is drone in this sense now a transitive verb? I was holding out for “tele-assassinate” but I suppose that’s too many syllables.
No argument there. The old Chinese curse seems apt; we live in interesting times.
“move on her like a bitch.”
Trump isn’t known for careful language. Apparently he moved on her like a mean female.
Curiously Nancy criticized his talk, but never described any actions by Trump.
With respect to the Clinton droning, she gave a typical Clinton deflection/lie when responding to it. She said she didn’t remember “joking” about it. Of course, no one is concerned with her joking about it. The real concern is that she seriously proposed it. In her classical dishonest manner, she gave a response to a strawman that no one was concerned about. However, she managed to not even have to deny that she seriously suggested that someone be killed. It is just amazing to me that this issue doesn’t receive more play and that no one is questioning her more closely as to what occurred.
JD
I posted a few days back that Trump is hanging from a cliff, but not dead yet. Strangely, Rasmussen Reports finds he has recovered and enjoys a two point lead. I don’t think its controversial to say that RR leans conservative. Still, if one believes the mainstream media is in bed with Hillary (and I think there’s at least evidence to support that position as well), it’s hard to know where Trump really stands with respect to popular support. He sure is bringing the crowds in at his rallies.
Mark,
He’s still a pig. Oink. Oink. Oink.
But yeah, he may not lose.
BTW: I’m ordering a Gary Johnson sign. I’m looking locally first, otherwise, online.
Gary Johnson, stoned and even less informed than Trump, is for me the worst of the three significant choices, except for Hillary. He would be co-opted into the Clinton machine in the blink of an eye.
The Clintons have managed to build a hybrid of Tammany Hall and the Peronista machine of Argentina, on an international scale.
Give me boorish Trump any day over what she represents. The biggest difference between Hillary and Evita is that she can’t sing. But boy, she can act.
Mark: the bbc says it’s 49% to 40%. You can guess which way. From their commentary there are a lot of women emerging with octopus stories. What I can’t quite understand from this side of the pond is where these women were before Trump sealed the nomination. Presumably such tales of harassment would have slowed Trumpy down a bit, and you could have had a ‘sensible’ nominee to fight against the Emperor.
Lucia,
Like I said earlier, yup.
Sometimes pigs prevail I guess, remember the nursery rhyme. Here’s Green Jelly’s version. It’s pretty strange. 🙂
Jit,
Well, there’s an argument to be made for them. Trump apparently has the reputation of suing the heck out of anybody or anything with the temerity to annoy him. If Trump raped me, I might actually think about it before I went public. But maybe that’s just me.
Lots of Trump supporters have just gotten done making excuses for Juanita Broaddrick not coming forward earlier? Do I have that right? (not rhetorical, but not of any particular interest to me either) Sauce for the goose…
Oh. But why now, as opposed to during the primaries? Good question. Sorry. I have no good answer.
Jit “What I can’t quite understand from this side of the pond is where these women were before Trump sealed the nomination.”
….
Wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if they were intentionally held back so that Trump would be nominated and that they could later be sprung on him at the most vulnerable time. Read yesterday that NBC knew about the Billy Bush — Trump comments at least by August of this year. Conversely, it is the same thing that is going on with the wikileaks steady stream of email dumps. It seems to me that Assange, knowing that Clinton wanted to kill him, waited until the most vulnerable time to release the emails.
JD
Or it could be that they were motivated by his comments in the debate that “it was all talk” and he didn’t do those things. This is not new, BTW. NYT had a story in May and there are many stories dating to last year. Check out all the “I’m skeptical of the timing” links here
From Frum
Trump’s lawyer has already notified the NYT that the recent story about the two women is false, is libel per se and demanded a retraction. Under the circumstances, I don’t see he has a choice other than to sue.
This is Trump’s MO . Maybe the lawyers here can opine on how these things work, but I don’t see him opening himself up to discovery.
RB “The NYTimes and Washington Post told you the truth about Trump. Fox News and talk radio lied to you. You might keep that in mind in future ”
People may also want to consider who told the truth about Hillary Clinton.
JD
Yes, the cattle futures story was broken by NYT
Heh. Are we really arguing about whether or not to believe NYT or Fox News in the future? Rhetorical, I guess we are.
That seems silly to me folks. Just saying. [Edit: and that’s sayin something, considering the green jelly video I just linked with the three little pigs thing.]
RB,
Talk radio, definitely. You can also add Heritage Action and Breitbart.com. I’m less sure about Fox News, though. Since I don’t watch TV news, I can’t say with any confidence either way.
The candidate they wanted, though, was Cruz. But they got Trump. They’re responsible, IMO, for the idea that low turnout by disaffected white males was the reason Romney lost in 2012 and that being anti-immigration and anti-trade is a winning strategy. The evidence is that most of the disaffected white males don’t live in swing states, so they didn’t affect the 2012 election.
Even if that were true about the 2012 election, which I seriously doubt, that strategy is a long term loser based on changing demographics. Since Clinton is campaigning against free trade as well, that issue doesn’t help Trump either.
hunter
I had to laugh at this. The translation of “worst of the three” is that you think he’s worse than Trump but better than Hillary. 🙂
I don’t believe he would be co-opted into the Clinton machine. Evah.
He has his faults, but going Dem or Socialist is not one of them.
mark bofill
Well, assuming their stories are true, this answer to why is obvious. It would be
(a) because it was still dangerous for some of them during the primaries. It’s not now.
(b) Trump just described the behavior they experienced. So they think they have a chance of being believed.
One of the dangers that has been eliminated is them being faced with a costly defamation suit by a guy with deep pockets who is willing to spend money on suits even if his lawyer would advise him he doesn’t have a case. The knew they would face financial peril if he filed and they would never recover the financial cost of defending the suit. Talking about the case would just add a second injury to the first one.
Of course if you think their story is false, you’ll have other theories about why now. But “Now” is 100% entirely consistent with the story being true.
RB “Yes, the cattle futures story was broken by NYT”
Sheesh in the 1990s.
JD
DeWitt
He’s a public figure now. And they have a tape where he says he behaved exactly as they claim he behaved.
And the women will have lawyers jumping in line to defend them for free.
Lucia,
Yeah, I get (b) and agree with that, makes sense. Outrage over a direct lie that they can refute from personal experience.
(a) didn’t occur to me, and in my naive ignorance I must admit I still don’t quite see why that’s so. Trump would have gone after them before but not now. Because… with all the piling on, there are too many people to sue them all? Not rhetorical.
[edit:
Oh. … I guess that’s true.]
This may be a good time to bring back Charlie Sykes
mark bofill
Sure. He could still go after them. That’s not the point.
Now even if Trump goes after them:
1) There will be likely be fairly good attorneys stepping forward to help the women out for free or failing that, there will be people willing to pay their attorneys.
2) The story was aired by a paper with deep pockets to defend and so the story will continue to be aired, and aired, and aired. (And Trump will look really odd if he sues the women but not the NYT.)
3) Their attorneys will have access to a tape where Trump says he does just precisely what they claim he did. They will certainly show that to juries; so the chance he will win is low.
4) Possibly, the other women will be able to appear as witnesses to pattern of behavior. (not sure though.)
5) Assuming they want pay back (which they may) they can now get it. The really couldn’t way back when.
6) There are so many of them it’s hard to smear them individually.
7) Heck, lawyers might argue he can’t be defamed because he already admitted to all that behavior himself.
Mind you: if someone does not believe the women, they can find a list of reasons why someone making it up would come out now rather than earlier. But that they come out “now” is entirely consistent — and not remotely unexpected– if their story is true.
Gotcha. Thanks Lucia, lots of reasons I see. Sounds reasonable to me.
RB,
Yeah, I’ve read that. I don’t disagree. I also think MSM handling (or ignoring, maybe would be the way to put it) of WikiLeaks leaks damaging to Hillary’s campaign recently has aggravated it.
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Saying which, anybody following the WikiLeaks releases? I thought my jaw was going to fall off my face when Snopes found that the claim that Newsweek had established that WikiLeaks releases were forgeries was false. I’d suspected Snopes was more left biased than that.
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Steven Mosher, you working on making sense of these emails?
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(sorry, couldn’t resist.) 🙂
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Was I just not paying enough attention, or is this not the craziest election cycle we’ve had in a while? RMA (Rhetorical-My-Answer): I think it’s pretty crazy. Not that this disclaimer will keep me out of Lewandowski’s next study subject group I’m sure.
mark bofill,
I see MSM coverage of the wikileaks, but if you don’t like what you see, some conservatives don’t have problems with some of the leaks either.
Plus
Here’s the NYT on the Wall Street speeches.
It depends on to whom you think she’s lying. IMO, rather than Bernie moving her to the left, I think he enabled her to show something more like her true colors.
RB,
Really? I must be missing them. Oh, I can find an occasional mention; I think I ran across an ABC reporter covering one of the less controversial ones. Maybe I can find it again. Also, I’ll go search for awhile, to see if I’ve missed loads of coverage.
….
Yeah, looks like you’re right, I can find some today. Maybe I just didn’t give them enough time to report. Instant gratification…
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Thanks RB!
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[Edit: here’s politico from six days ago. Missed it.]
“Steven Mosher, you working on making sense of these emails?
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err no. I am fighting a resistant bacterial infection.
superbug. not cool. hospital bugs are the worst.
maybe later
I’m really sorry to hear that Steven, jezsus. That sucks. I was mostly just making a dumb joke as I usually do. Hope you get well soon sir.
Lucia,
Trump is indeed an oinking pig. Hillary is an oinking pig’s enabler as well as being incompetent, a borderline (at least) criminal, a tool of Wall Street special interests, and in bed with those who want to ditch the constitution and turn America into a totalitarian progressive “paradise”. I’ll vote for the pig.
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This puts me in mind of the Louisiana gubernatorial election where people actually had bumper stickers reading “Vote for the crook”, the other candidate being David Duke.
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Johnson is almost surely a better person than Trump or Clinton. But I think he would be a disaster as president, much worse than Trump.
Here’s the NYT exploring Hillary’s role in counter-attacking Bill’s women (Oct 2)
RB: “some conservatives don’t have problems with some of the leaks”.
Yeah, establishment #NeverTrump conservatives.
RB,
Where in the paper was that article located? I’m betting below the fold, but probably not the front page at all.
From this CNN article it would appear that the evidence shows that Hillary was involved in counter-attacking those who had consensual affairs, mainly Gennifer Flowers.
RB,
Have you moved on to another subject? Not rhetorical, and it’s totally OK if you have (sometimes I’m slow to realize the obvious, I’m sure that’s not news 🙂 ) but WikiLeaks isn’t even mentioned in either of those two links.
.
I’ve already conceded the overall point; there is some mainstream coverage. I say that because I don’t want you to misinterpret this as reopening that issue. Regardless though, those links don’t appear to be about WikiLeaks.
mark bofill,
Yes, I’m moving around subjects a bit – one of the links was in regards to a previous comment . The second link was with regards to the “enabler” meme – i.e., was it enabling a crime
I was pretty sure it was me being slow. Thanks!
OK, signing off for a while..
Have you now or have you ever been a male chauvinist pig?
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I guess it’s not about policies anymore. shame.
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I’m sure that most people don’t know that few American presidents could meet the modern or the feminist standards on the treatment of women, from Washington to Kennedy, even if it was consensual.
Ron Graf,
“This was the official opinion as voiced by Carl Sagan’s in 1968.”
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I never listened to or watched Sagan. What I read made me think he was kind of a ninny (far too many ‘billions and billions’ in his writings). But if he concluded the chance ETs have paid regular visits to Earth was ‘miniscule’ then maybe I underestimated the man.
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IMO, ET visits go hand in hand with cold fusion.
RB,
“Hillary was involved in counter-attacking those who had consensual affairs,”
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Ya, well, she was involved in all the counterattacks, consensual sex or not. There are two conclusions I draw from this: 1) Hillary’s priorities are very different from those of all the women I have ever known, and 2) Hillary is willing to do very bad (unethical) things to people to advance her agenda.
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If I were Julian Assange, and Hillary takes office, I would ask the embassy for a room in the basement…. she was not joking about a drone attack.
Trump doesn’t meet old fashioned standards either.
And if someone objects to the notion that a guy can’t grab a woman’s breasts or p***sy or kiss her on the basis that thats a “modern” concept of a “feminist concept”— well. that one be a good modern concept and a good feminist concept..
Steven Mosher (Comment #152432),
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Sounds dire. I wish you well. I once picked up a resistant upper respiratory infection in South America. I got two courses of antibiotics (oral and injection) but still had a raging fever upon my return to the States. Went to my doctor, who prescribed a cephalosporin, which, at the time, was effective against most resistant strains. And it absolutely was, knocked it down in 24 hours, and I felt good for the first time in 3 weeks. Trouble was, he only prescribed 6 days (apparently standard). By day 8, the infection returned… and by day 9 as bad as before. Went back to the doctor… he prescribed another 6 day course. I said: “I need 14 days, not less.” He said “6 days is the standard treatment”. I said “I don’t give a shit if 6 days is the standard, I want 14.” He was very pissed, but reluctantly gave me 14, and the infection was gone for good. What ever else happens, be your own advocate.
I just read an interesting article about how younger people are living together and having children because they would lose too many government benefits if they married. Of course, that also means they can’t buy a house. Later in life, i.e. Social Security benefits age, it pays to get married and get spousal benefits. If incomes were similar, one collects primary and spousal benefits starting at 62 until the age of maximum benefits occurs and then switch.
IMO, the solution to this problem is to never phase out a low income benefit to avoid the huge spikes in effective marginal tax rate at relatively low incomes. So what if a billionaire is collecting EITC.
Lucia,
“Trump doesn’t meet old fashioned standards either.”
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Of course not. He has behaved like a jerk for as long as I have been aware of his existance. I hope his deeds were not as bad as his words, but who knows.
I have on good authority that Steve Mosher reviewed the Wikileaks e-mails before they were publicized.
He would have a field day with the stories. The e-mails almost never match the headline. One has Justice Dept colluding with Clinton camp on e-mails, but it just shows they told of routine court filings.
Another is conspiring to evade a subpoena, and the e-mail just says let’s use this (subpoena) as an excuse to declare we want to release all e-mails.
SteveF,
I thought courses of antibiotics were always ten days or so. The absolutely worst thing that you can do is to not kill off the infection completely. That’s how we get resistant bugs.
A friend of mine had drug resistant diverticulitis. He was on antibiotics for months. That’s no fun either. Killing off your beneficial intestinal bugs leads to all sorts of unpleasant problems. They eventually had to operate. Among other things, he can’t eat pizza anymore.
DeWitt,
I believe at the time the antibiotic he prescribed was thought to be ‘so effective’ that 6 days was enough. And yes, the very worst thing you can do is stop an antibiotic too soon… which generates nore resistant surviviors.
That is not a feminist concept if the Clintons are in power. Gloria Steinem declared that Kathleen Willey’s charges even if true were not a problem because Bill Clinton didn’t do it repeatedly.
If Trump and Clintons are equally criminal and immoral, one produces standards of decency that the other destroys.
“Famed” Clinton competence from Bloomberg. “Asked if she’d wiped her server, she responded: “Like with a cloth or something?â€
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-10-13/clinton-aides-sought-to-deny-any-classified-data-wikileaks
JD
Are there any pictures of the woman on the plane from the early 80s.
Trump is all but saying she is not hot enough for him to have done what she says.
We know for a fact that some women will make charges about sexual behavior that aren’t true. See the Duke Lacrosse team case, for example. Given the low standard for proof, it probably happens frequently on modern college campuses.
MikeN
Like that claim is remotely credible….. Not!
Aside from the whole difference in pictures of her today vs. the past….
I don’t believe for a minute that a pig has the same standards of who he brings to a public party and introduces to his friend and has the same standards about who he will hit on and abuse.
Plenty of guys will treat really good looking women “better” and totally trash less attractive women doing horrible things to them. Acting as if the less attractive women are somehow don’t deserve good treatment and should think the guys “attentions” are “flattering”. So the claim she wasn’t hot enough for him. Uuhhh… Bunk!
DeWitt Payne (Comment #152451)
“I thought courses of antibiotics were always ten days or so.”
No.
Depends on the infection and the patient response and political correctness
Treatment for a UTI can be 1 dose of superstrength amoxicillin
Giarrdhia could be a 1 shot course of 4 tablets of Fasigyn.
TB could be months of medication.
Tonsillitis can be a 10 day course of penicillin.
In practice 90% of people are better in 5 days and rarely need to go far into the second course.
Pneumonia could take a 10 day course and might in some cases need more.
It always bugged me that doctors insisted on 10 days when there was no need in a lot of cases.
More potential side effects the longer stronger the dose and the more chance of building up resistance.
Antibiotics do not generally cure you, they help your own immune system fight the infection better and quicker. When it is up to speed it knocks off the infection.
Yes, relapses occur, Steve F the number of bugs can drop 99.9% or more but even a handful alive multiplying hourly can lead to a full on reinfection within 24 hours of stopping antibiotics.
–
Diverticulitis is a funny disease, pockets in the distal large bowel that can develop into abscesses and in rare cases need surgery [partial bowel resection].
Your friend had complications, abscesses, that could not respond to antibiotics and needed surgery for that reason, happens to about 1 in 300 people who have frequent attacks of normally antibiotic sensitive diverticulitis.
We get resistant bugs because truckloads of strong antibiotics are used to kill off infection in the poultry , pork and beef we eat.
Thank goodness they put it in.
Superbugs are a 30-40 year old myth.
A superbug is one that carries 20 different genes extra for blocking antibiotics. Think of yourself as carrying a tent and two suitcases running for a train, very hard to make it. Superbugs are killed off by normal bugs in the normal world and can only survive in an antibiotic laden hospital or farm world. The moment they step out of that protected environment they die.
Have a good day both of you with less misconceptions.
Lucia: “He’s a public figure now. And they have a tape where he says he behaved exactly as they claim he behaved.”
.
If we are talking about the same conversion in the trailer I heard someone in a crude sarcastic tone musing about the hardships of his celebrity. The tone was very similar to the primary stump comment that he could shot somebody on the street and get away with it.
.
I’m not saying Trump is pure as snowflakes but the leftist media believes, and conveys, that conservatives are inherently creepy, vulgar, uneducated, and generally ickky in all ways. If Trump were a liberal they would have absolutely no problem and just make jokes about it like they have for Bill for 24 years.
Ron,
Different people can spin the video different ways. And likely in different contexts different people will decide what they think.
But the video exists. And the issue above is not how to weigh it in the election but how to weigh it in a defamation suit where other evidence would be presented. . If the video is aired, jury members would be in a position trying decide whether he would or would not behave the way he claims he behaved. The additional evidence is a bunch of women saying he did do exactly that. And the “defamation” issue is whether their saying so is defamation in context of the other evidence.
The video would damage his case if he tries to get a jury to disbelieve a woman who claim he did precisely what he claimed he does.
Of course, you as a voter can decide something else. But my guess is a jury is unlikely to decide the woman who claimed he behaved exactly as he already told the world he behaved had defamed him. So his defamation case will be weak even if you think that..well…maybe he didn’t do it.
Honestly, there is no way in the world I would rule that a guy in the circumstances Trump finds himself is was defamed. Some will think it’s more likely than not that he did exactly what the women claimed (in which case: no defamation.) And others will think that even if what they claimed is false, he still isn’t defamed because he already claims to do what they claim he did. So: still not defamed.
angech,
I don’t think I have misconceptions about antibiotics, and I was aware of different treatment courses for different infections and different antibiotics. Perhaps you misunderstood something I wrote.
Ron,
Trump couldn’t win a defamation suit unless he got mother Teresa to testify that she was present and ‘Donald didn’t do it’. But Teresa has passed away. So the Donald should forget about defamation suits…. he is his own best defamer, and doesn’t need any help from others.
Lucia, there is a difference between a “claim” in the serious admission sense and sarcastic exaggeration and locker room bragging.
.
Using your standard one could use Hillary’s “done him” comment as evidence in a murder trial. BTW one can search “Clinton body count.” and find much stronger evidence.
SteveF,
The thing is people who are focused on the election and “how the left makes this look” often overlook what is required for him to prove defamation.
The “easiest” defamation case for him is against one of the woman.
In that case, for their statements to be “defamation” they have to achieve ALL of the following:
1) Be untrue (and statements of fact.)
2) Be believed by someone: let’s call the believer X. (The jury member can be “Y”).
3) Lower his reputation by “X” (not “Y”.)
So: a jury member (“Y) has to decide if the claim is true. If the jury member thinks there a greater 50% chance the plaintiffs allegations are true, they jury (Y) finds for the plaintiff. Trump loses. Trump will lose a lot of jury member right here. They don’t need to go any further. With the tape, we are already at this point for many jury members.
But lets suppose some of the jury members decide there is a greater than 50% chance the plaintiffs claim is false. The jury now needs to look to decide whether anyone believe the claims. ( I think it’s pretty certain they will conclude some people believe the claims even if a jury member thinks they might not be true.)
But now, the jury member has to decide whether “X” — a person who believed the claim — thought less of Trump after hearing the claim than they though of him before.
The groups “X” will surely include manypeople who already thought Trump was a pig. With respect to them: no defamation.
So: the question will be, assuming the claims are false can you find people who believed them but previously held Trump in esteem? This groups is likely to be the “empty set”.
And after that: you have to look to damages. Did their thinking less of Trump do him any harm? All of this would be very difficult for Trump to prove.
And I haven’t even begun to discussing the extra hurdles put in place because he is a public figure.
Ron Graf
And in a defamation suit, that’s an argument you need to make to a jury.
Look, I may have been born at night. But I wasn’t born last night. And I’ve had experience with people and know the difference between light locker room jokes and other things. And I also know the difference between people who say utterly totally piggishing things and think certain topics are “funny” and those who don’t.
Generally speaking, guys who say things like that as “jokes” are pigs. And they tend to behave badly. Perhaps not as badly as they’re “jokes” say they will behave. But … let me tell you. I know– and learned early, to stay the f**** away from guys who make that sort of “joke”.
And if the jury holds more than 50% women over the age of 16, they will “know” that men who tell that sort of “joke” have a fairly high probability of behaving very, very badly when think they can get away with it.
So that video…not helpful in a defamation suit. Nope, even if someone can say there is a difference– and even if that is sometimes true — that tape would not help in a defamation suit.
Lucia: “He’s a public figure now. And they have a tape where he says he behaved exactly as they claim he behaved.â€
……
There are a number of interesting aspects to a defamation case. First, the public figure defense with respect to the NYTs is not that high of a bar because he can definitely prove malice. (He has been called a sociopath and misogynist by various columnists.) I really think discovery would be very harmful to him, but he probably doesn’t think so because, with his money, he is used to steam rolling opposing parties — that is why he is always threatening to sue.
…..
Also, I suspect that he would file suit somewhere other than NY (the NY courts would be extremely biased against him), and it would be interesting where he would file. If the case got to the Supreme Court, I would hope that Ginsburg would recuse herself.
…..
Additionally, I watched the tape of the woman who said he groped her like an octopus. I don’t know what she looked like when the alleged incident occurred, but with Trump’s predilection for beauty queen type women, she surely doesn’t fit that bill now. Also, when she said she sort of tolerated the groping up top, but got angry when it went below the belt that doesn’t ring true to me. In any event, there is more than a miniscule chance that Trump did nothing to this woman.
JD
Ron
BTW
While much of this is valid, it is absolutely irrelevant to whether Trump could win a defamation suit against the NYT or the women reporting that he groopped w/o consent.
JD
Yeah, but this argument won’t fly with most women. Most women know perfectly well that the fact he prefers gorgeous women doesn’t mean he won’t grope even ugly ones. And in fact, I’ve seen plenty of guys treat good looking (or rich) women respectfully and treat bad ones like trash. And by “trash” I mean women who are targets for being groped w/o consent.
Maybe there are some men somewhere who haven’t seen this….. But honestly, I’m sure lots of women– good looking or ugly– have seen it.
This bit might sway some juries. Or not.
Perhaps. And some juries will believe this. But one problem he has is (a) more than 1 woman and (2) he did say he does this.
I get that (2) might have been “locker room talk” or “a joke”. But the take is still there.
I can’t imagine a lawyer advising him to file this suit or telling him he is likely to win. He’s not likely to win it.
edit: I should add: it’s possible that the women coming forward could contain a mix of women who he did grope and women who he did not grope. For the record: I have not been groped by Trump.
JD Ohio
Does anyone think Clinton does her own dusting or cleaning? I’m pretty sure she has a cleaning staff for that.
Lucia: “And in fact, I’ve seen plenty of guys treat good looking (or rich) women respectfully and treat bad ones like trash.”
I agree with this as a general statement. However, Trump treated good looking women like trash. I suspect that this is where male and female viewpoints may differ. Personally, I can’t imagine Trump wanting to get anywhere near non-beauty queen women when he could take advantage of beauty queen women. You have a different perspective, which I respect. In any event, if he didn’t do it, there will probably be all sorts of conflicting facts and statements by the woman.
….
Additionally, I would say that it is clear that Trump has disrespectful attitudes towards some women. However, it is not clear that he groped the woman who claimed he acted like an octopus. Obviously, with Trump on tape, it is easier to rule against him. On the other hand, if the tape is all that matters then thousands of women, or more, can make up stories and each would win their case.
…..
Lucia: “I can’t imagine a lawyer advising him to file this suit or telling him he is likely to win. He’s not likely to win it.” I can imagine some circumstances where he would win it and his lawyer would tell him so. Suppose he was in France and she was in NY the day the groping allegedly occurred.
JD
Oh– I should add about the ‘above the belt’ / ‘below the belt’ bit. I actually believe that some women might be ok with a PDA with a guy provided he limitted it to “above the belt”, but they would get really upset if he starts to try to “move south” on an airplane.
This is not remotely unbelievable.
And now the issue is:
this is a defamation suit. In a defamation suit, Trump needs to prove she lied. I’m not buying that. What she’s saying is utterly plausible and normal from a woman’s POV. And if Trump is seeking defamation against her: he doesn’t have enough evidence.
In a rape case, and I going to believe beyond a reasonable doubt that what she’s saying is true? Dunno. Depends on more. I might need to hear more to decide that the guy should be thrown in jail. So here, I might go for “not guilty”.
So: my level of skepticism is about the same in both cases. But who a judge for might differ because doubt works in opposite directions in both cases.
If the case is sufficiently grey:
(a) No defamation found but also
(b) No criminal guilt found.
I don’t need to think he’s proven guilty to find no defamation.
JD
On this
I sure as heck can see him getting near non-beauty queen women when he’s on an airplane and there aren’t any other available that instant. I also can see him getting near non-beauty queen woman at an office or an interview or any number of places where a beauty queen woman isn’t around that instant.
And I can see him trying to get near a non-beauty queen woman when there are beauty queen women around but those women are not in a position to be taken advantage of.
So: yeah. If he has a room full of beauty queens trapped and vulnerable, he would pick them over a non-beauty queen trapped and vulnerable. But even Trump doesn’t have a room full of trapped vulnerable beauty queens available on a daily or even weekly basis.
Yes. If her story pins down a specific date with certainty and he can prove he wasn’t there then he can win.
Does she have a specific date? (Real question.)
But the women aren’t the ones filing the suits. The question — in a defamation suit– is whether Trump could win.
Lucia: “I don’t need to think he’s proven guilty to find no defamation.”
….
True, but there are many, many facts and circumstances that could arise concerning her claims. Right now we are at the tip of the iceberg stage.
….
Lucia: “But the women aren’t the ones filing the suits.” I would simply say, not yet. We are only several days past the debate.
JD
JD,
When they file, I’ll discuss their chances of prevailing. I imagine “all plaintiffs lose” will be a strong possibility.
Lucia, I know it has occurred to you that these women are not above slandering someone when even if it’s successfully defended in two days, that’s two days women have imprinted for you and millions of others a mental image of Trump being the creep every women has encountered at some point. This is the power that sick women use and it is every bit as much messed up as the sick men. Depravity and dishonesty are equal opportunity traits. The left is not about protecting women or any other identity that can be conjured for an affinity group. They are about painting conservatives in unflattering ways any possible way they can — for the cause.
Lucia: “I sure as heck can see him getting near non-beauty queen women when he’s on an airplane and there aren’t any other available that instant. I also can see him getting near non-beauty queen woman at an office or an interview or any number of places where a beauty queen woman isn’t around that instant.”
….
Again, there is probably a different male/female perspective here. I don’t think Trump is in the groping mode all of the time.
….
I would add that my brother knew several Cleveland Browns football players in the past. They told him that he (my brother) would not believe the way that women were throwing themselves at the football players all of the time. (I knew some players myself and have every reason to believe it is true.) I suspect that much the same would be happening to Trump at least some of the time. If you wish, you may want to get your husband’s perspective as to whether Trump would be predisposed to grope non-beauty queen women. He is probably best positioned to give you a male viewpoint that you trust.
Don’t know how much longer I want to discuss this topic. Can lead to some weird and very unpleasant matters.
JD
Ron Graf,
Yes. Of course it has occurred to me that these women might be spewing out entirely false stories.
But we already knew he was creepy. The “locker room” talk showed us he was a creep. So did lots of other public talk. (And yes, it’s creepy even if it’s “locker room talke” or “a joke”. The guy is creepy.) We already know about the trading up for younger wives– which is creepy. The guy is a oinking pig– and that’s even if these stories are false.
Are we going to discuss
(a) whether or not he could win a defamation suit or
(b) what the left is above or not above?
Because these aren’t the same story or issue. Even if the left in their entirely are satan that won’t help him prove his allegation that these womens stories are not true. Nor will it help him prove the stories hurt his reputation.
Whether the left is or is not “above” anything in particular, he’s not going to win a defamation suit against the women unless he can absolutely prove what they say is false– as in he can prove he was in Tunisia when the one woman claims he was on a flight to NY or something like that. What “the left” is or is not willing to do will be pretty immaterial to the defamation case.
Really: You need to separate these things. The left can be satan. Hillary can be a succubus risen from the underworld. And Trump can still be an oinking pig who groped women without their consent. This is not an “either /or” proposition.
JD
I don’t need a male pov.
I know from a female pov that lots of guys grope women and those guys would prefer other males to not believe their standards are “that low”. It’s totally ridiculous to suggest a man has better info on this. Men will grope woman X and not reveal to other men that they tried to grope woman X. Sometimes that is because the guy wants other guys to think he is so “alpha” that he will only grope beauty queens.
That they might succeed in convincing men that they only grope beauty queens doesn’t make it true. The people who know it’s not true are the targets of the groping: mostly women.
Also: don’t try to sell this idea that men are the experts on who men grope to the women on a jury. And don’t tell women that they can gain understanding by asking guys to explain all this.
As for women throwing themselves at athletes: Sure. My dad’s cousin Lucia Boettcher worked for atheletic teams and she says the exact same thing. That still doesn’t mean those same guys wouldn’t grope a less attractive women in some circumstances.
And it doesn’t mean Trump would not grope a non-beauty queen when stuck killing time on an airplane next to a non-beauty queen with no vulnerable beauty queens around.
I neither suggested nor think he was. I’m only suggesting that he might sometimes have been in groping mode. In those cases, he might have groped a less-than-beauty queens. Killing time on an airplane might be one of those times.
Really: if you’ve got women on a jury, don’t try to convince them he wouldn’t grope someone because she wasn’t his “type” even if that “type” was a beauty queen. The eye-rolls may not be visible, but… well… they are there. Seriously.
And no. Don’t tell the objects of the hitting on that they can get better info about who a guys would grope from the guys who the groper wants to impress with his exploits. Because no woman in the world is going to believe men have better knowledge of who male pigs hit on than women have.
Lucia, I will concede anything you assert about the defamation suit because my concern is the election. I am admittedly fearful of the lengths that the left might go in the name of the greater good, but I would not at all be surprised if Gary Johnson were the front runner now that there would be a woman scandal being released right now by the NYT. I believe they tried to do it to McCain. They would have done it to Romney if he weren’t a monogamous Mormon. If I can remember correctly the NYT had five women making allegations against Trump or one of the other GOP candidates last year. That was until Fox interviewed the women and found they were 180 degrees misrepresented by the NYT. Even I almost forgot this but I’m sure I could find it if you don’t remember it.
SteveF (Comment #152463) Yes, sorry.
Election getting down to the nitty grotty now.
Must be very desperate on both sides.
May the dirtiest candidate win!
“May the dirtiest candidate win.”
.
Angech, is it just me or does the left call people who disagree with them on the science, deniers who are inherently religious and uneducated and ant-science. They don’t debate any points with you they paint a mental picture of you that you are unworthy of acknowledgment, stupid, greedy, self-interested, maybe even creepy.
.
Robert Deniro, released a video of himself venting his disgust with Trump and even wants “to punch him in the nose.” I just looked at Bob’s wikipedia page and found the typical hollywood story of two wives, getting caught in a prostitution case in Paris, not paying his property tax on his mansion. But Hollywood stars are creepy-proof, unless, of course, they run for office as a conservative.
JD Ohio is using some bizarre male POVs to equate who Trump will grope to who he ended up marrying.
Lucia: “Also: don’t try to sell this idea that men are the experts on who men grope to the women on a jury. And don’t tell women that they can gain understanding by asking guys to explain all this.”
….
I am in no way suggesting that men are experts in general. I thought that maybe your husband, who I know you respect, as one individual, might have an additional perspective that you would find useful. You have every right to feel that you have nothing to gain from talking to your husband. There is nothing to be gained by any further speculations on my part. The woman’s testimony will be thoroughly vetted and time will tell whether it is creditable.
JD
I was checking back in on this thread to see if Carrick or anyone else had said anything else about the IT issues that drew me back here. It appears none have. I figured that’d make this a good time to skip out, except I saw JD OHio said this about the potential defamation lawsuit Trump could file:
This is a remarkable comment for anyone who has any basic familiarity with libel/slander law in regard to public figures as the standards which require one demonstrate there was “actual malice” involved have nothing to do with the common usage of the word “malice.” Whether or not a speaker/writer feels malice toward the one they (supposedly) defame has practically no relevance on any such lawsuit. The phrase “actual malice” has a specific legal meaning, which basically amounts to, “The accused said things he either knew were false or acted with reckless disregard to their thruthfulness.”
Given JD Ohio has said he is a lawyer on multilple occasions on this very site, it is a bit disappointing he’d get such a simple detail about the law regarding this issue wrong. That’s particularly true since we’ve discussed what “actual malice” means on this website, with his participation (see here for one such thread).
I think this and the nature of his comments on this issue suggests there is some bias involved in his comments on this issue, but you are free to make of it what you will. I just wanted to make the basic point that anyone with any knowledge of defamation law and how it applies to public figures should know calling a person “a sociopath and misogynist” has no legal relevance unless those specific claims are being labeled as a source of defamation.
I’m not going to say anything more. I find this discussion far too disturbing.
“… time will tell whether it is creditable.” That matters about as much as whether a CAGW climate paper is later found to be flawed a week after its world headlining news release.
Trump has a long history of siding with those accused of sex crimes e.g. Mike Tyson. When he supported Bill C, he described his accusers similarly .
Oh, sorry. I need to make a follow-up comment because as I went to close my screen with the search results for “actual malice” on this site, I happened to notice one such comment that is highly relevant. In a different thread than the one I linked to above (which was about the same general topic), JD Ohio wrote a comment which included this:
Two and a half years ago JD Ohio knew demonstrating “actual malice” in a defamation lawsuit was not about demonstrating ill-will. Back then, JD Ohio would have known better than to tell people New York Times columnists labeling Donald Trump “a sociopath and misogynist” proves malice in regard to defamation lawsuits. Funny how times change.
Again, I’m not going to say more. I think the implications in my comment speak loud enough.
Trump pointed out that Obama is more against conservatives than he is against ISIS. I think the left masters propaganda and spreading consensus through stage-crafted imagery. Truth and transparent debate are their only fears. ISIS and their sympathizers are too valuable an affinity group to alienate and lose their potential votes.
Lucia,
I agree that men are lousy sources for what other men might do. in 1968, a girl friend told me that the groom at his wedding reception had kissed her on the mouth including a tongue thrust. The marriage was to a childhood friend of mine. They are still married and I suspect she has no idea he was capable of something like this. I believed her, but couldn’t imagine that any outwardly civil guy would do such a thing.
I don’t buy Trump’s claim to locker room talk either, although my exposure to locker rooms ended in high school. I suppose the only thing I ever hear at my age (74) is an occasional recommendation for Viagra, with some lurid details.
The thing I can’t understand is how any woman could support Trump at this point. Maybe, based on their own experience, he isn’t any different from the men they hang with – but I can’t believe that. Or maybe it’s like people’s description of their own economic plight. When they are asked if they themselves are suffering, the answer is not always yes, but they are sure plenty of other people are. So maybe a lot of women just know that most men are capable of what Trump has confessed to even though their own contacts aren’t like that.
but I don’t doubt for a minute that gropers abound. After all, what are subways for?
The speech Hillary should have given, anent an earlier discussion on how had she been smarter she might have been able to make the whole thing go away:
http://www.npr.org/2016/10/13/497880554/the-video-defense-about-her-emails-hillary-clinton-never-gave
Jferguson: “So maybe a lot of women just know that most men are capable of what Trump has confessed to even though their own contacts aren’t like that.”
.
I also haven’t heard talk like that since the HS jocks would brag about exploits in the locker room or elsewhere. But I noticed that after all of Trumps talk of taking the breath mints, and how he loves to kiss the women, he came out an shook her hand. Billy Bush was so disappointing that he suggested that not hugging was impolite. Trump then gave her an air kiss. Talk is talk. I don’t think he has ever shot anyone on the streets of NYC. I am interested if the press held the video since the primary with intent of stealing the election for Hillary. And, if Hillary’s 9-11 freeze up was only caught by video by an MSNBC’s camera, for example, I have serious questions as to whether it would have aired. Or, you can believe the left wouldn’t go that low.
I sorta screwed up the tongue at the wedding reception story.
I doubt the bride ever heard about it nor knows her new husband could be capable of such a thing. But I believed my girl friend that it did happen.
Ron Graf,
They don’t call them October Surprises for nothing.
In summary, Ron Graf will believe in UFO sightings but not the confession by Trump caught on tape.
Brandon S:”Given JD Ohio has said he is a lawyer on multilple occasions on this very site, it is a bit disappointing he’d get such a simple detail about the law regarding this issue wrong.”
….
About 2 weeks ago, you said that you weren’t going to comment here anymore. I would suggest that you keep your word.
….
The clear hostility of the NYTs to Trump makes it comparatively easy for him to hurdle the actual malice standard. First, of course, he has to prove that the NYT’s statement is false. If it is not false, it doesn’t matter whether it was made with malice; the Times would not be liable. Next if the NYT’s statement was false, Trump would have to meet the actual malice standard. The precise wording of the standard to be applied is: “A public figure may not recover damages for a defamatory falsehood without clear and convincing proof that the false “statement was made with `actual malice’ – that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 279 -280 (1964)” The fact that NYTs is very hostile to Trump (I stopped counting after I reached 7 strongly negative columns, editorials and articles in today’s paper — just one day) would be good circumstantial evidence that the NYTs acted with knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard of falsity if its charges turn out to false. The unrelenting hostility of the Times towards Trump makes it more difficult to rely on good faith for any mistakes that could be made. (The Time’s statements of his misdeeds also may be accurate, of course.)
My basic point was that the “actual malice” standard, which is quite often a large barrier to a plaintiff in a defamation case is not a large barrier with respect to Trump’s current threats to sue. The real barrier for Trump is proving falsity. There is also the matter of proving at least a reckless failure to investigate sources, but the hostility of the Times to Trump makes it much more difficult for the Times to assert any mistakes it may have made (and it may have made none) were not made at least recklessly.
Of course, I will not waste me time replying to your uninformed comments on this matter. You are welcome to have the last word. (Turns out my response to Brandon’s first comment was completed on my computer and Brandon made a second comment in the meantime that I hadn’t seen until I posted this. I have no reason to respond to the second comment and won’t waste any more of my time on this matter with Brandon.)
JD
JD Ohio, you have a bad tendency to claim I’ve said things I’ve never said in order to paint me in a negative light. Your latest remark:
Is just yet another example. I did not say I would refrain from commenting at this site. I would never say such a thing because I know there are things that could lead to me commenting at any site, even if I didn’t like the idea. That’s why rather than making a promise like you suggest in which I say something like, “I will never comment here again,” I said:
After writing that, I did refrain from visiting this site for approximately one week. Then a reader e-mailed me asking about things said here regarding IT issues because he remembered me providing advice and information on such matters in the past. A while later, Carrick referred to me by name, suggesting I could provide information for people.
Everyone knows a person may think they will or will not do something at one point then change their mind later because of unforeseen circumstances. I had not anticipated either of these things happening when I said “I think I will just stay away from this site.” Due to things things happening which I had not anticipated, I changed my mind. Trying to paint something like that as a person breaking their word is a pathetic attempt at smearing.
As for the rest of what you say, you now claim:
Whether or not the bias you claim exists within the New York Times could provide “circumstantial evidence” is a very different issue than what you said before. Before, you said this (supposed) bias meant:
Circumstantial evidence cannot “definitely prove” anything. You have simply changed your claim after it was demonstrated to be false. You say you will not respond to me because it would be a waste of time, but I think few people will view that as the real reason. I think most people will simply understand those who make obviously false claims rarely care to engage in any substantial discussion of what they say.
As for the last word, I don’t care who has it. I simply felt it was important to make sure people understood the bias against Trump you claim exist within the New York Times in no way means Trump could definitely prove “actual malice” as would be necessary for a libel lawsuit. I believe that point has been adequately made by you walking back from your disputed claim.
If I am to have the last word though, let it be this. The opposite of what you say may be true. It may be more difficult to show “actual malice” with people who are biased against Trump than those who are not. The reason for this is a person who genuinely believes what they say to be true, even if they believe it due to bias, cannot (for most practical purposes) be found to demonstrate “actual malice.” Biased individuals may be more likely to genuinely believe the defamatory remarks they make. This means showing bias against Trump could actually make it more likely the New York Times acted with simple carelessness rather than “actual malice.”
“a person who genuinely believes what they say to be true, even if they believe it due to bias, cannot (for most practical purposes) be found to demonstrate “actual malice.â€
–
Malice is hurting people.
Even if you believe wholeheartedly something is true, to say it openly and publicly and reportably knowing that it will hurt someone is in my opinion malice.
What else could it be?
You can opine until the cows come home how the person may have deserved it but if you are responsible you acted with malice, even if it was “justifiable” malice in your eyes.
– Everyone here is biased one way or another , I do not see this as a fault, just a normal attribute.
Cthulhu is better than Gary Johnson?, at least I know his name.
Brandon: “Circumstantial evidence cannot “definitely prove†anything.”
Ridiculously stupid statement. DNA evidence is circumstantial evidence. It definitely proves something. There are many forms of circumstantial evidence that are highly persuasive. Sometimes direct evidence is not persuasive. Eyewitness identification of criminals is not infrequently wrong. This statement was so stupid I had to respond to it.
JD
J Ferguson: “I don’t buy Trump’s claim to locker room talk either”
I agree with you here. In fact, at least since I entered law school, (which is a long time ago) I have never heard a man brag about groping. Additionally, I know of no incidents of groping — of course, there could have been some I was not told about. While in college, I did associate with some people who were heavy drinkers and partiers, and it is possible that something of this nature did happen then. However, my college age days are a distant memory, and I don’t trust my memory since then.
JD
angech, as I said above, the phrase “actual malice” is a legal phrase which has a specific meaning practically unrelated to one’s emotional state. I even provided a quotation which gives the legal meaning of the term. As such, discussing the common usage of the word “malice” isn’t responsive to anything I have said.
JD Ohio, I’m not sure if that counts as irony or not. It’s certainly funny. I believe if I were you, I would be calling you a liar now. I’m not interested in that. I’m just going to quote you and provide the first definition I get when doing an internet search for “circumstantial evidence”:
It is good to know you will break your word in order to respond to a reasonably close paraphrase of a dictionary definition because it is “[r]idiculously stupid.” Seriously, it is. It shows just how much of a tool you are.
Perhaps you can respond again to act haughty and insist circumstantial evidence of bias can “definitely prove” actual malice in a defamation lawsuit. I hope so. It would be funny.
[edit: Re: locker room talk] I recall two (2) guys (coworkers) trying to engage in similar conversations with me over the years. Ladies, FWIW I find it uncomfortable too, not sure why they are trying to discuss it with me in the first place. AwkWard. Don’t really know what it’s all about.
.
But I don’t really care, either. Maybe it is sinister. Maybe it makes them oinking pigs. Maybe they are closet rapists, and maybe it’s a flag that they’ll grope women at any and every opportunity.
.
Houthis rebels have been firing on one of our destroyers, Russia is calling the shots in Syria and Aleppo while we cower, GDP growth remains in the toilet 1.4% right now, median wages where they were almost 20 years ago, entitlement spending is about half our budget, 45 million Americans or about 1/7’th the population uses food stamps, and we are about twenty (20) trillion dollars in debt and still borrowing. [Edit, oh, and more or less every time a police officer is forced to shoot an African American for whatever reason, we have rioting in our cities.]
.
Is Hillary a corrupt liar? Obviously. Is Trump a pig? Oink Oink Yes!
.
Can we talk about any other issues? Apparently we the people can’t. Not interested, pics of Kyle Jenner in panties are trending, gotta run. Yaka-wow!
j ferguson
Most men I know don’t behave like that around me and I think they don’t behave like that generally. But I’ve met men who do, and they quite frequently resort to “jokes” and make claims about never doing the sort of thing they “joke” about. Sometimes guys know these men are do what they claim to “joke” about; sometimes other guys don’t know. Because some of these men do try to conceal their bad behavior. The can successfully conceal the behavior for guys– because they aren’t groping guys. But they can’t conceal it from women because women are the targets of the groping.
So you can’t ask a man for his perspective on what the pig-who-conceals “would” do and learn the full truth about the man from a guy. Because this guy conceals this behavior from men. But he doesn’t conceal it from the woman who he is groping, and who knows they have been groped. What you can learn is this: If guys all say the man “would never” do that and woman say they were groped, that means the man conceals his groping from men. (At least usually. In the Trump case there could be an instance of women making things up. But generally, there is little reason for women to make up the stories like “this guy tried to grope me on the plane!”.)
Wow, i shouldn’t post when I’m tired. I certainly don’t think that a lot of women think all men are gropers. I was trying to wrestle with how Trump continues to have female support and supposed that his female supporters as a group may not find his reported behavior that unusual even if they never themselves been groped.
sorry.
Lucia: ‘But generally, there is little reason for women to make up the stories like “this guy tried to grope me on the plane!â€.)’
.
Unless their an October candidate before an election.
Ron
Yes. This is a situation where
(a) The story is consistent with being true.
(b) The story is consistent with being false.
Either could be the case. My only point to JD is the that his notion that certain things don’t ring true because it just doesn’t seem right that a guy who preferred beauty queens would grope ugly ducklings– well, nothing about that sounds at all suspicious to me. That doesn’t mean he did hit on the ‘ugly duckling’ (if we can even call her that), but I just don’t find the notion at all unlikely.
But sure: it’s also possible he didn’t do it. (To me, the more unlikely thing to me is that this happened (a) on an airplane and (b) a woman who has enough money and status to be flying 1st class didn’t talk to the stewardess. Why move the economy? Why not make a fuss and try to get him moved to economy. Why not just shriek? Still…. even that I don’t find unbelievable.)
Lucia,
she was in steerage. Flight Attendant asked if she wanted to ride in front. after she’d had enough groping she went back to her original seat.
odd thing, is she said that she didn’t react badly while he was above the waist.
There is another theory which might explain someone like trump – that one in eight women will respond positively to this sort of thing, so you just have to keep trying.
I have no idea whether there is anything to this.
She also said the armrest between their seats disappeared.
One of Trump’s reps suggested the story was baloney because first class seats in those days didn’t have collapsing armrests. I flew a lot then, but always in the back, so I don’t know.
This is what the NYT says
So, about a year ago, the Democrats were recruiting Ms Leeds in anticipation of a Trump nomination and preparing the groundwork by having her start making disclosures. As for Ms Crooks of the episode in 2005
And she can’t be believed either, because… October. But Ron Graf will believe in flying UFOs, practical cold fusion, faster than light communication and global warming hoaxes. It’s Lewandowsky-class material.
There is a really great line in the Walter Mathau movie “Charlie Varrick” Joe Don Baker is on an errand for the mob and finds himself in bed with a girl who wants to know what will ring his bell. He jumps out out of bed, goes to the madame and says something like “I never knowingly sleep with a moron.”
This is a terrific movie by the way.
And finally (you can hope) I do believe that a woman wouldn’t report something like this at the time. First, who would believe her, and second what might Trump do?
My guess is a lot more gropees are going to show up in the next week or so.
j ferguson,
Ok. That makes more sense. Because generally, a person who is used to 1st class treatment would tend to be more demanding.
I actually mentioned this story in comments before….I knew a guy who said precisely that. He said it at the dinner table while sitting next to his wife. Basically, you hit on everyone and sometimes someone will say yes. (How this worked was: my female friend Edith, who was French, had been in the US the year before. I was now on an exchange in France. She’d worked for this guy back in the US. While I was in France, he came to France with his wife on a trip. The couple took the Edith, Edith’s husband and me out to dinner. Edith and I were both aghast at his attitude– and that he would say this in front of his wife who didn’t bat an eye. Not sure if he hit on people– but it sort of sounded like he was referring to himself. Even if he wasn’t, he at least knew some who did and his view was they pretty much hit on everyone pretty aggressively and played the odds.)
I don’t know about the arm rests in first class now or ever. I don’t really even remember much about arm rests way back when. I just haven’t put “how arm rests on air plane behave” into permanent memory. I certainly don’t know if they all worked the same way. That said…. I do remember flying to Europe the summer after 5th grade. For odd reasons the plane was almost empty. I think I remember the spreading out over multiple seats to sleep– which would mean the arm rests must have gone up and down. But … maybe I mis-remember. I mean… the 70s. And I was how old… 11? )
It’s not impossible her memory is mostly true but contains false elements — like the armrest. That happens. But obviously, things are more believable if one happens to remember everything correctly in their entirety. (That said: no one ever does.)
j ferguson
I don’t find that odd so much. Plenty of women will be willing to make out in a limited way– and her limit was “no below the waist”.
The main thing is that if she was willing with the “upstairs” part, his trying to move a bit south isn’t quite the same as him just grabbing someone out of the blue with no invitation whatsoever. In some way, he’s just trying to go a little further along with a woman who is already making out with him.
Mind you, I think most women would not make out with a guy they never met before while in an airplane. Likewise, most guys wouldn’t make out with a woman they’d never met before on a plane. (Heck, most people don’t make out with other people on airplanes or in public in general.)
But if her story says she did that willingly, then presumably she must have been one who would make out with someone she’d never met before on a plane. How precisely that stranger would know her rule about “only on top” … mystery. So her story doesn’t make Trump quite the pig that some of the others do.
Trump just birthed the armrest truthers
Lucia said “(And yes, it’s creepy even if it’s “locker room talke†or “a jokeâ€. The guy is creepy.)”
Yes he is. Anyone who, on a public stage, with millions watching, brags about his genitals is very creepy.
john ferguson
This is what I see in NYT
Where did you see it implied that she was OK with one thing but not another?
RB,
Ok. So my memories of moveable armrests on the 747 we flew to Europe in the late 60s(?) or early 70s (?) is probably the truth. (Not sure year. It was the one where the Cubs were in the lead and then tanked while we were on vacation in Europe.)
Perhaps 1969?
“The Cubs, despite a respectable 92–70 record, would be remembered for having lost a remarkable 17  1â„2 games in the standings to the Mets in the last quarter of the season.”
HaroldW,
That would be the year.
Lucia,
The first commercial flight of a 747 was with Pan Am in 1970. I was on their last flight in 1991 out of Frankfurt. They always had arm rests that folded up. Seat design varied with the airline.
.
I knew a 3rd Officer on the Union Castle Steamship Co who told me that on the first day, greeting new arrivals, he would ask pretty girls “Would you like to fuck?” He was never slapped (that I saw) and was always successful in finding one. Being young and naive at the time I was horrified.
I’m sure he got turned down a lot. But, yeah, if he asked enough he had a shot of finding someone who said yes. Possibly some responded, “how much $$?” and he made an offer. You don’t know.
Few women will slap a guy for words. Especially since the person asked the rude question is likely to be pretty shocked and the guy will generally just go away and move on. And if the guy is slapped or lectured he’s likely to claim it was a joke. But as you know, that 3rd officer was not joking.
FWIW, I was once at a meeting with a female co-worker. Standing in line, two guys were discussing the relative attractiveness of the two of us in French… saying things that one would not say if they thought they were understood. (We were speaking in English….)
It was a very small meeting, in Switzerland. Anyway, I totally understood what they were saying, but believe it or not, I can keep dang composed. So, later that evening, my friend waved me over to the bar, and “challenged” me to prove I actually spoke French, saying something to me like, “Show me how good your French is”. So, I said something two these two guys — like “My friend is challenging me to prove I speak French. Do you want to tell her whether you think my French is ok”. Their faces…. One guy actually snorted his drink through his nose. (Yes… they knew what they’d said.)
So, they told her they thought my French was amazingly good for an American. And the other said (in French) that he’d learned a lesson ….
I never told my friend what they had been discussing in line ahead of us….
HaroldW and Lucia, this is not a good time to bring up 1969 for Cubs fans.
I had a Lithuanian acquaintance who could speak perfect English and Spanish. He was very Northern European in appearance and would frequently have Spanish speaking people in his hearing area discuss matters and make comments that they thought would not be understood by those in the listening area. He told me that most times he would merely grin but that sometimes he would make a general comment in Spanish and wait for a reaction. It was evidently the same as the French guys in Lucia’s post.
And just to unload all my thoughts here I have to say that this year’s presidential race makes a good case for getting past the two party approach whereby the political parties appear for the most part required to stand by their man and woman no matter how distasteful that might be and even sadder rationalizing their bad behaviors. A multiple party system where the candidates are selected by the parties and not by popular primary voting makes more sense to me but I doubt I’ll get much agreement here.
Most Republicans are making a major mistake by not dumping their support for Trump and showing some practical good judgement in concentrating their efforts down ballot and showing some evidence of principles for future benefit. Trump was a loser from the start and will finish that way. I will find it interesting what the defenders of Trump will say after election day and better what Trump will say and what his defenders response will be.
I will not be voting for the either major candidate again this year for reasons as in the past of their being not much of an ideological defining difference and this year additionally for reasons of character or the lack thereof.
Lucia,
I’m still horrified that anyone could be that rude.
Now it seems to be common.
Kenneth Fritsch
He’s already said it – the election is rigged. His supporters are unshakeable. Jerry Falwell Jr will vote for him even if assault stories are true . The WaPo in fact made a superb compilation of everything that occurred over the last one year still leaving him standing. Over the next few days, and barely a week after parading Bill C’s women as Hillary’s victims, we will see the Trump campaign attack the *multiple* women who’ve come forward. Let’s not forget Miss Utah in addition to the NYT, People, Palm Beach Post and pageant contestants either. You will also see the same talking points replicated here.
Plus: new accusation
“I knew a 3rd Officer on the Union Castle Steamship Co who told me that on the first day, greeting new arrivals, he would ask pretty girls “Would you like to fuck?â€
One variant is called the “Shock and Awe” or Apocapalypse opener. Not for the faint of heart. 30-35% success rate, field tested
http://bristollair.com/2008/outer-game/pua-routines/shock-and-awe-the-apocalypse-opener/
However, these field tests indicate otherwise
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjR9F9tPNhc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ira9A7wSW3M
Steven,
Thanks for the vids. Educational.
I guess it depends more on the speaker and the actual approach than I would have guessed. Interesting how few were offended by the request.
Steve,
The rate of success may differ in bars vs. street. Still… I doubt if that guy gets 1/3rd yes.
What I’ll say then is what I’m saying now. The voting public have allowed themselves to be distracted by a squirrel. Trump is a pig, Hillary is a liar. blah blah. Pussy grabbing and what were the seats like on airplanes thirty years ago in first class. Is Michelle Obama a hypocrite. blah blah. Don’t care, it’s got almost nothing to do with anything important to who to vote for IMO.
I’m voting for Trump. Oink Oink Trump. Hillary is Obama come again, and the status quo doesn’t much impress me right now. I’d like Obamacare to be repealed, not fixed; Hillary’s idea of a fix is probably another step towards single payer if it’s not actually single payer. I’d like to live in a world where, if America is not loved, at least we are respected again, even if that respect is born of simple fear. Maybe where Russia is afraid of our response again when they decide to bomb cities in Syria, maybe where Iran is afraid to launch missiles at our ships. Maybe a billionaire can improve on our crappy anemic economic recovery. I mean, has Hillary been just sitting on the answer all these years, keeping it a secret for this moment? Bosh, she’ll do same old same old. Maybe a government that thinks food stamps aren’t the answer to much of anything would help, maybe Trump will give us that. I’d like to at least give Trump a crack at shaking up the cozy arrangements of our ruling class and fire some bureaucrats, maybe piss off some lobbyists and controlling interests.
.
Does he have much chance? Nah, he probably won’t get elected. Even if he does, will he accomplish anything? Maybe not. I doubt Hillary will either. I vote for him, he loses, so I’ll end up with Hillary in that case anyway, I’ll live with it. But it doesn’t appear to cost much of anything to roll the dice, and I think pig that he may be, he’d still be an improvement on Madam President.
[Edit: oh, and forgot Supreme Court justice nomination. Heck, that in and of itself justifies voting against Hillary IMO]
RB: “And she can’t be believed either, because… October. But Ron Graf will believe in flying UFOs, practical cold fusion, faster than light communication and global warming hoaxes. It’s Lewandowsky-class material.”
.
RB, when I talked about the left relying on smearing as a card of choice in lieu of troubling themselves with truth finding, I wasn’t expecting an anecdotal example so quickly. Conservatives realize that very little in human discourse is new. This is why we value the concept of innocence until proven guilty for crimes. Prudence calls for a suspension of belief, held in abeyance until all the available facts can be presented. This also goes for witnesses (hundreds) military servicemen and commercial airline worker who have put their jobs on the line to voice their incredible observations. As far as ” practical cold fusion,” I would be excited about impractical cold fusion. BTW, warm superconductors will be reality too some point. This is only if the innovation crushing left does not squeeze the human will out of every last one of us.
.
The point about extra-terrestrial life is not a question if; its a question of how common are each of the Drake’s equation’s factors. This all takes a couple of sentences to explain to people who have surrendered their minds to the deities controlling the party line. If you want to associate yourself with Lewandowsky be my guest.
.
As I said, all human traits are equal opportunity. There are no “bad” genders, races or religions, only misguided doctrines.
JD, Trump issues lawsuit threats and files lawsuits and doesn’t settle to affect the calculations of future opponents. Big pocketed people who take him to court tend to see Trump’s backing down. The NYT would almost certainly win a lawsuit, given that he has a tape saying the same things, and that they are reporting what the women are claiming, which no one can declare is false.
The timing issue might give him the ability to claim reckless disregard for falsity, because how much fact checking can they do between the time of the debate and the women coming forward, and the time of the story?
Scott Adams suggests that the ‘octopus’ detail was a well crafted attack, given to the woman to make.
The armrests probably went up, though more recently in first class they do not because of the electronics in them. I wonder about the size of the seats. Trump is a big guy, but there would have been a larger gap between seats. It might not be as feasible a story in first class as is economy. Plus was it typical back then to upgrade people to first class for free? Why her?
MikeN
Why do you think it would be less feasible in first class? The seats are larger, but they aren’t exactly miles wide. I don’t see how the extra width would make it less difficult for someone to grope if they were groping on purpose. I tend to find the groping story more plausible in wider seats in first class in so much as the extra room gives… well … more room for motion.
edit: Plus there are more kids and witnesses in economy. So I would think it would be easier for someone to grope in first class than in economy where there are often 3 seats side by side. That third person would tend to make it a bit more difficult to grope.
I don’t know what was up with upgrades in the early 80s. Certainly upgrades were routine before the 90s.
Wow. So it’s over. Sow the wind and all that… one has to admire the cojones of someone digging up other people’s skeletons, knowing that he has a busload hidden himself! Or perhaps it’s hubris followed by nemesis…
Either way, it has to be over now. These women can’t all be Hillary’s stooges.
Anyone else would have thrown it in by now, but I guess the Donald isn’t the type to give in. If I was a Republican I’d be crying into my beer right now and wondering how the hell we got to where we are now and what my best shot is. As a Brit I have no dog in this fight, but it’s a fight that’s getting uncomfortable to watch.
Interesting comparison: the UK gov’s chief whip was alleged to have called a cop a “pleb” in 2012. He denied it, but still resigned. (He later lost a libel case.) There isn’t a cat’s chance in hell that Trump would have survived these revelations, true or false, in the UK.
Jit,
I think Ryan has concluded the GOPs best shot is for everyone running for Congress to just run for themselves. Trump is then on his own.
That’s likely what Congressional candidates will do. They certainly aren’t going to expect any Trump coat-tails.
.RB (Comment #152528)
Conspiracy theories are big with political true believers. RB, you seem to find the pertinent links for these things. Does Hillary continue to think that word of Bill’s late night dalliances in the WH were part of a right wing conspiracy or did that spot on the dress turn her around? What might be the Trump defenders spot on the dress that will turn them around?
Of course, Hillary in a political context can perhaps be excused for defending the indefensible as her political future probably depended on it or so she probably thought. The Trump defenders have no such excuse.
Kenneth,
We have to ask the Russians for help on your questions.
The Republican party could dump Trump in favor of the Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson – after all he has won an office on the Republican ticket. I think he is on the ballot in all of the states.
I sometimes think that most of the voting public would align their views best with either a Libertarian or Green Party candidate but with a two party system they want to vote for a candidate that has a chance to win and they have somehow became convinced that one or another party is going to turn things around for the better.
A Hillary dump in favor of the Green party would be more in the wheelhouse of most Democrats, but in these political games you will never dump a front runner. Of course, a damaged Hillary without a majority in the House or Senate is probably a gift for the Republicans. On the other hand, a Hillary with majorities in the House and Senate will be a Trumpian gift to the left. Trump might even go back to being a Democrat from which he came.
“The Trump defenders have no such excuse.”
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Kenneth, might I remind you that Trump’s candidacy did not start last week. And the NYT made false allegations against him a year ago, misrepresenting, not just one, but five women, who all had to come out on Fox to bebunk the NYT. These women could have come forward then. But their reasoning given is that they listened to him say in the second debate that he had not actually forced himself on women, it was just words. So it was only the lie that bothered them? That is pretty lame if these women are telling the truth. That means they were fine keeping their information to themselves but for the tape.
.
I realize why people would be reluctant to come out unless they had the support of corroborating information, like many of Bill victims, who the left vilifies. But many of them were outed by friends and family, and not right before an election or nomination (like Anita Hill).
.
Supporting the behavior, making last minute accusations, whether they are true or not, should not be done. And claims should deserve extra scrutiny. Out of millions of people it is just too easy for limelight seekers or shills.
Kenneth,
That’s a theory. The problem is the social conservatives don’t like the socially liberal Libertarians. In some parts of the country, most of the GOP is the former; in some the latter. The libertarian leaning Republican voters have gotten used to the fact that the GOP is a better choice if you want fiscal solvency. They are mostly of the opinion the DEM aren’t any better on civil liberties than the GOP (each just supports different civil liberties– but neither really more than the other.) So, they will vote GOP rather than DEM when that’s the only choice.
But the socially conservatives are not necessarily fiscal conservatives. When they aren’t they don’t find Libertarians any more attractive than Dems. So…. not sure they will vote for Johnson.
I’ve been independent– but mostly care about fiscal, so vote GOP more often than Dem. But I don’t vote GOP if the person running is tooooo socially conservative and I certainly don’t vote GOP if they are social-conservative without being fiscally conservative.
If a GOP’s main planks are (a) overturn Roe v. Wade or (b) overturn Obergefell or anything similar — it’s really unlikely I’ll vote for them. (Bear in mind, it’s hypothetically possibly they are running against Satan. So, I say unlikely.) Similarly, some social conservatives aren’t going to vote for libertarians.
RB (Comment #152541)
I am disappointed that you came up empty, RB. The Russians may be changing the transcript to any pertinent emails so I need a red, white and blue link.
I find it a bit funny that our government gets all uptight about foreign governments hacking into our domestic communications. That seems to be a problem for the left when the hacks expose their problems and the neo cons on the right who mumble something about those foreign devils should not be doing that. Was not the US recently caught obtaining foreign government communications nefariously? Yes. Does not the US government have by far the superior capabilities to hack and listen in on foreign communications? Yes. Do you think they use those capabilities? I do. Do we know for sure? No, because it is a secret.
Ron Graf (Comment #152543)
I would be surprised if you were so naive to believe that the NYT and WaPost would not come up with an October surprise. From the beginning an astute political assessment of the this year’s presidential race would have predicted that the NYT and WaPost and generally the mainstream media would tilt toward daring the Republican party to move against Trump by way of his “democratic” support of the people. They knew well and good that Trump was a loose cannon and probably already had some inklings of things for the October surprises. They also knew that Hillary would not be a strong candidate and had lots of political baggage. I think they might have had some inklings also that Trumps populism and outsider charade might win out in the Republican primaries.
It is time for the Trump supporters to admit that they have been duped. I think in the end you all will find that Trump never took any of this seriously and will probably admit to it. He will comfortably go back to doing what he did before and probably profit from his exercise in futility. That is what hucksters do. His supporters will be disappointed and looking for others to blame. That is what huckster supporters do.
Remind me.
lucia (Comment #152544)
Yet Evangelicals vote for Trump and Catholics vote for Hillary.
Lucia, first class vs economy a third seat is an issue, but I was comparing two economy sized seats vs two first class sized ones. With wider seats Trump would have to move over, especially with both hands on her, and it would be easily visible to others. However, I see now that she claimed the person across the aisle saw the whole thing. If the story couldn’t get any weirder, that person has come forward and is denying it, saying she was being aggressive. He was already famous in Britain for claims of setting up a Barney Frank style prostitution ring with British pols when he was 17. He was 19 at the time of this flight and claims to remember what everyone was wearing and that Trump gave her his cufflinks.
Some other details. For first class, I think there would have been two armrests not one. Also, would British Air back then have been like Swiss Air with a double decker setup, so she would be going not ‘back to her seat’ but down to her seat?
Also, upgrades are routing, but is it routine for a stewardess to invite you to move up? This suggests possibly Trump saw the woman and had her brought up to him.
I was thinking of the wrong accuser, she was attractive if not a model.
Kenneth Fritsch,
.
Are you suggesting that if Trump won the election that he would refuse the office and say ‘nah, just kidding’?
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I believe that Trump entered the primaries without much expectation of winning. I suspect he didn’t really believe in the beginning that he had any realistic chance of winning. I certainly didn’t and said so to my family and friends, loudly and often.
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This said, he won the nomination. His candidacy has been real every since. Going into the debates he was in a virtual tie with Hillary Clinton; that’s a real shot.
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Will he go back to doing what he was doing before? Well, I guess. I’m not certain why anybody would expect him to do anything else. Certainly I don’t expect him to become a priest, or commit suicide, or .. anything else, really.
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Over? Not in my book. When the election is over and the votes are counted (and sure, my expectation is in fact that Hillary will win), I’ll accept that we’re saddled with President Hillary Clinton for the next four years. Not before.
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Hope this helps.
Kenneth
Some. The thing is: you can’t count on the idea that the GOP voters will just swing over to Libertarian. Some will; others won’t.
MikeN
Not very far. I’m not seeing the wider distance as any sort of impediment.
But it would be more visible in coach where there are generally at least three seats adjacent before you get to the aisle. It would be easier to conceal in first class where the closest other person is across the aisle.
Yeah. This person who says he was a witness claims he has a photographic memory.
I’ve got to say: I can’t possibly imagine remembering anything unless something untoward happened. Heck, I doubt I’d ever pay attention enough to even notice someone gave someone else cufflinks.
You really have to wonder what this flight was supposedly like. Action packed either way.
He says she was wearing a white pantsuit, she says she was wearing a skirt.
BTW: I’m waiting for the exact flight to be identified. Then we need a list of passengers.
And a 37-year old told a 19-year old that she wanted to marry Trump. Hmm…
RB,
Try to be less indecipherable than “the bunny”.
Just wondering about the likelihood of this:
So you mean Gilberthorpe was 19 yo?
I don’t know Leeds and didn’t know her then. So I can’t say whether she would or would not have said such a thing to Gilberthorpe nor whether her saying would necessarily mean she actually did want to marry Trump. Nor can I guess whether Leeds might not have been a little drunk on 1st class airline cocktails and so on.
Any number of things in this story may or may not be true.
The only thing that strikes me as “Not sure I believe that” (based on implausibility to me) is the claim of “photographic memory”. I’m sure some people have one. But I known people who claim it– and I’ve never seen much evidence they have it. Not saying they don’t… but… I’m not always sure the photographs don’t shift and become inaccurate just as much as non-photo memories shift.
Gilberthorpe would have been in his teens then. He said it was 1980/81 and he’s 54 now.
Not the best character witness one could find
RB,
I’m not sure how Gilberthorpe age makes his story either more or less believable. Nineteen would be old enough to remember things that struck you. It’s not like he was seven years old nor old enough to be nearing dementia. In fact, I’d expect kids in the teens to remember things fairly well– better than someone 50 or so. That is assuming they noticed the behavior or incident at all.
Ok, what the story about him announcing he was engaged to someone who doesn’t exist — if true– would make him a bit less credible now. (I assume if it’s not true, we’ll hear soon.)
Lucia that’s what the teen pimp is claiming she said, though it might not have directly to him.
Regarding first class vs coach, I was comparing what I was thinking when I read the story to now. Three seats in economy doesn’t matter. I was thinking of two economy sized seats vs first class sized seats. Having to move over a 1-2 feet, as tall as Trump is, I think it would be noticeable to the people sitting behind as well. Perhaps I am misjudging the size of first class seats back then. Unlike now, this would have been noticeably larger than a business class seat.
Mike–
I just don’t buy that people in the seat behind Trump would give much notice someone sliding over in his seat not even if it was 1-2 feet. Certainly, I doubt they would remember an event like “OMG! I saw a guy slide over”. It’s not memorable.
I do think a person in the 3rd seat of economy class would notice groping in the seats next to them. They’d probably even say something like “Can’t you guys wait until we land?” This would be impossible not to notice in economy class.
Besides that, people in the seats behind could have had head phones on, been sleeping or doing any number of things. If asleep, they wouldn’t notice.
Photographic memory, is there a British usage where the guy is just saying that he is good at remembering faces?
MikeN,
I have a friend who claims she literally remembers full images of things. That’s what she means by “photographic memories”. She’s American. I’ve seen no evidence her memory is any better than mine nor any more “photographic”. But perhaps she does remember things as images.
(From what she describes, recording the memories ‘photographically’ is actually often a disadvantage not an advantage.)
Brandon S ” “Circumstantial evidence cannot “definitely prove†anything.â€
[Start quoting JD] “Ridiculously stupid statement.” [end quoting JD]
[quoting some unnamed source on the Internet not said by me but apparently on the Internet somewhere and adding] “pointing indirectly toward someone’s guilt but not conclusively proving it.”
…Ridiculously stupid again. Civil cases don’t involve guilt, they involve liability. Also, since you can’t get inside a person’s brain and examine the brain cells of a person, to prove states of mind (including intent, malice and recklessness), you almost always use circumstantial evidence to prove state of mind. For instance, an ABA publication stated with respect to the intent state of mind:
…”Knowing that intent is a critical element in many crimes [please note higher standard of proof than defamation suits involving public figures] and torts and that intent is inherently difficult to prove, the next logical question is how to prove it? Evidence of intent comes in two varieties—direct and circumstantial. Direct evidence of intent (for example, an admission from the accused or admission from a party-opponent) is very rare. In the vast majority of cases, litigants must attempt to prove intent by inference through circumstantial evidence.” [from p. 5] at http://www.bing.com/search?q=use+of+circumstantial+evidence+to+prove+intent+in+a+lawsuit&qs=n&form=QBLH&pq=use+of+circumstantial+evidence+to&sc=0-33&sp=-1&sk=&cvid=16C3429FFBF045259AC6F9AB3EBB151B
…..
In regard to circumstantial and direct evidence, here is what the US Supreme Court says and additional commentary by an attorney.
…”Holland v. United States, 348 U.S. 121, 75 S. Ct. 127, 99 L. Ed. 150 (1954). In Holland, the United States Supreme Court stated:
…..
“Circumstantial evidence in this respect is intrinsically no different from testimonial evidence. Admittedly, circumstantial evidence may in some cases point to a wholly incorrect result. Yet this is equally true of testimonial evidence. In both instances, a jury is asked to weigh the chances that the evidence correctly points to guilt against the possibility of inaccuracy or ambiguous inference. In both the jury must use its experience with people and events in weighing the probabilities. “
“Circumstantial Evidence in Criminal Trials
Circumstantial evidence is still evidence. It is treated no differently than direct evidence. A jury is required to consider all admissible evidence when deliberating. The amount of weight that the jury gives to each piece of evidence is for the jury to decide. The law does not require a jury to disregard or give less weight to circumstantial evidence. In fact, quite frequently, the circumstantial evidence in a case can be more convincing than the direct evidence.” See http://yourfloridacriminalattorney.com/tag/difference-between-direct-evidence-and-circumstantial-evidence/
…..
Additionally, the author of the Florida article stated: “It is my experience that most jurors are not comfortable convicting an individual based solely on circumstantial evidence unless the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming.” The issue of “guilt” is a strawperson argument, but even your strawperson argument (pulled from some unnamed source on the Internet) is wrong; you can prove guilt solely by circumstantial evidence.
There are many subtleties involving the “actual malice” defamation standard, but it is useless to point them out to someone so juvenile and ignorant — particularly someone who adds an Internet comment [apparently an internet comment because it was not linked] to his actual words. All I can respond to is your actual words, which is what I did and accurately so. Then you try to change the impact of your words by in bad faith interjecting something that may be from the Internet. Of course, I hope not to respond again, but if you go amazingly low and stupid again, I may.
For others, I will state that I was simply stating that the hostility shown by the NYTs to Trump makes it much easier for him to get over the actual malice hump if falsity is shown than in other cases. A simple idea that others can buy or not, but my outsider’s, early observation based on my experience.
JD
Kenneth,
I think it has been clear for a while that Hillary doesn’t much care about stains on young women’s dresses, or anything similar. She clearly put up with Bill’s serial womanizing for a very long time, since long before he was president. I simply do not buy that she was unaware for long after they were married, and may well have been aware before. Of course she accepts physical reality… Bill was carrying on in the White House with a young intern…. and I would not be at all surprised if there were other women he was involved with during his presidency, nor suprised if Hillary is also aware of them; I just don’t think it matters to Hillary. OTOH, personal wealth, power, and advancing her desired public policies appear to matter to her very much.
JD Ohio,
The NY Times does actual malice more convincinly than most publications, though there may be a few other publications, on both left and right, that are nearly as bad. The bigger question is if Trump could ever get a jury to believe he didn’t actually do the things the Times accuses him of. There I doubt he will ever succeed. Sort of like Hillary claiming defamation because someone says she lied about something… never going to fly, malice or no malice, because she willfully deceives nearly all the time.
lucia (Comment #152551)
I think that there are 2 issues here that may well be separate ones in the minds of voters. One is the two party system where the party voters vote for whoever the party runs in an election because their votes in many case are like being a fan of the Cubs or the White Sox. There is some ideology going where the voter at least thinks they know where a party or party nominee stands, but in my mind those differences are often small and many times inconsistent across the ideological spectrum.
In the case of a libertarian candidate the issue of what will the government do for me would well be at the forefront of discussion. At the current stage of development of our intellectual views on government (favoring more government) the pragmatic question before the voters and put there by the prevailing intellectuals would be to attempt to show and scare the voting public that without massive government support they would be helpless. That argument unfortunately would succeed with voters who have been condition to depend heavily on government for butter and bullets. The libertarian intellectual movement has not reached the stage of being a political movement and probably is better in staying in the realm of intellectual discussions and probably never becoming involved directly by running candidates for public offices.
On the other hand, I know libertarians and Gary Johnson is no libertarian. He is less of a libertarian than Rand Paul, a sitting US Senator, and much more a leaning libertarian Republican. The Republicans really have nothing to lose by pushing and backing his candidacy. Even if against all odds Trump were somehow able to win (by maybe the Russians rigging the elections – ha, ha) it should be obvious, even to Trump supporters, that with a loose cannon like him Republicans would have to spend all their time defending him. Hillary and the Democrats could have a somewhat similar problem with her presidency although much of her defending will be provided by the main stream media and particularly the NYTs and WaPost.
Meanwhile on the Supreme Court, which is one of the top issues, if not the top issue underlying the Supreme Court:
…
“Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is apologizing for characterizing as “dumb and disrespectful” the national anthem protests by San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and other athletes.
The court released a statement from Ginsburg on Friday in which she said she was barely aware of the anthem protest and that her comments were “inappropriately dismissive and harsh.”
“Some of you have inquired about a book interview in which I was asked how I felt about Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players who refused to stand for the national anthem,” Ginsburg’s statement read. “Barely aware of the incident or its purpose, my comments were inappropriately dismissive and harsh. I should have declined to respond.”
….
Wouldn’t be surprised if she leaves soon if Clinton is elected. She has exhibited extremely poor judgment over the last couple of months.
JD
SteveF: “…Sort of like Hillary claiming defamation because someone says she lied about something…”
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There is a huge difference between being ladies man, like Ben Franklin or JFK and sexual assault as alleged against Bill Clinton and now Trump. There is very little dispute about Trump being the former, the later has evidence newly presented in October before election, not by accident, and thus needs careful scrutiny.
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The NYT should also be expected to practice that same caution especially in the light of their openly politically biased reporting and their history of smear attempts against McCain and Trump last spring.
[Fox News 5-16-16]
Somewhere among last week’s e-mail’s was one chronicling Hillary’s staff’s scramble to deal with something Hillary had lied about.
I bet she keeps them busy with this sort of activity.
Steve F ” The bigger question is if Trump could ever get a jury to believe he didn’t actually do the things the Times accuses him of. There I doubt he will ever succeed.”
I agree with that. However, Lucia mentioned the public/figure actual malice issue that would arise in any defamation action filed by Trump. Normally, even if a plaintiff could prove falsity, the actual malice standard is a big deal. Not so in this case because of the Times’ clear and deep hostility to Trump,
JD
JD Ohio,
That kind of ‘poor judgement’ (impulsive behavior is I think more accurate) was one of the symptoms my dad displayed in the early stages of Alzheimers. Based on her age and the recent episodes of ‘poor judgement’ (completely contrary to her normally careful behavior), I would be surprised if she is not in the early stages of the disease.
SteveF “That kind of ‘poor judgement’ (impulsive behavior is I think more accurate) was one of the symptoms my dad displayed in the early stages of Alzheimers.”
….
Not having the patience or inclination to listen to Katie Couric, I haven’t seen the tape. However, my first guess is that she is simply old and out of touch.
JD
JD Ohio,
I should add: nearly half of all people who reach 85 years old have age related dementia, and the majority of those have Alzhiemer’s. Ginsberg is 83 1/2 years old.
Do you (anyone reading being addressed) still consider WikiLeaks to be credible? The reason I ask: if you do, either this email (id12803) back from May of this year shows an incredible degree of prescience, or the DNC has been arranging this game for quite some time now. At least, these are the only two explanations that occur to me, don’t be shy about pointing out what I’m missing if it’s pertinent.
The email is sort of long, the part that seems to exhibit spooky foreknowledge runs like this:
I get it that they had the tape. They had the ‘grope’ under the table back then too? I thought these women spontaneously decided to come forward…
mark bofill,
Of course they had the tape, they were already planning the Alicia Machado ‘humiliated for being too fat’ attack, and they almost surely had some claims of kissing and groping as well. Not much of a leap from there to the email about a fake job add. The guy spent his entire life talking and behaving badly, he can’t expect that is not going to catch up with him. It has.
SteveF,
So does it follow that at least some of these women coordinated with the DNC back in May?
[Edit: my point is, the women come forward with ‘accounts of inappropriate touching‘. Groping. here, that’s how it’s being reported. Groping; that’s pretty specific I think.]
Mark bofill,
Maybe they had already talked with these women, maybe they had only second hand information…. but we are unlikely to ever know.
Thanks SteveF.
Mark, thanks for this DNC May email:
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Steve is right that evidence of knowledge of the women’s stories is not necessarily evidence of collusion with them. It certainly opens the question of how widespread the knowledge was. If there was collusion with the press I think this scandal may blow back regardless of the support of the claims.
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Think about it. How can the Hillary camp cry foul about Russia tampering with our election when this will have been the second time Clinton has done it, the first time in creating a cover story for Benghazi (even before the attack was over.)
Ron Graf,
Yes. This is part of the reason I refuse to say the game is up until the votes are counted. That’s at least half my reason for bringing it up anyway.
Certainly, little in the emails seems to be conclusive. There’s a lot of material in there that’s suggestive as heck though! Great conspiracy theory fodder. I think in addition to the conspiracy theory fodder, there’s also some reasonable evidence to be had.
Thanks.
Sounds like we can guess as to the stories that will drop later:
Should be proficient in lying about age if the boss thinks you’re too old Working mothers not preferred (the boss finds pumping breast milk disgusting, and worries they’re too focused on their children).
MikeN, does not the jovial playful manner in which Clinton staff engage with the inside joke mock employment ad itself smack of a dirty tricks dept? Maybe it’s my perspective but looking at this old ABC interviews of Paula Jones getting grilled by Sam Donaldson and Judy Woodruff seem to paint a double standard. Woodruff drives Jones to tears by minute 28 on this Youtube. Also on it Barbara Walters interrogates Monica. I had forgotten that Monica was trapped unwillingly into testifying against Clinton when Ken Starr got a hold of Linda Tripp’s tapes of their conversations. That still did not deter Barbara from grilling her almost to tears, accusing her of immorality and irresponsibility.
JD, Is this indication of hostile disposition by NY Times?
“The only thing that strikes me as “Not sure I believe that†(based on implausibility to me) is the claim of “photographic memoryâ€. I’m sure some people have one. But I known people who claim it– and I’ve never seen much evidence they have it. Not saying they don’t… but… I’m not always sure the photographs don’t shift and become inaccurate just as much as non-photo memories shift.”
What did the guys say about you in french? do you remember
My French story
I was 19. I was cruising the Chicago Bars. Down in the Loop.
It was a Piano Bar. Windows in the front. I think the name was Crickets.. I stood there and two women in their 40’s were talking in French. One had red hair. Cant recall the other.
After about 5 minutes I walked up and explained to them that it was impolite to talk about me in French when I didn’t understand a single word of what they were saying. The redhead looked at me puzzled and said “if you cannot speak french, how did you know we were talking about you?” To which I responded, “All women talk about me, they can’t help it”. To which she responded, “ah the arrogant american” and I said, “Ya whatever, so are you two taking me to coconuts dance club, or are you just gunna sit there and dream about it?” To which she responded “we were talking about it but you are not dressed very well”… and well I could go on.. but it’s mixed company, got some nice clothes out of the deal…
The best trick of all was being able to recount a whole conversation with multiple people.
Say there were 5 people in the room. 1,2,3,4,5
1 talked about A, 2 diverted to topic B, 1 went back to A, and then 3 brought up C and 1 expanded on C, and 4 brought it back to A, and then 5 switched to E, and then 2 went on to talk about F, and 4 changed to W, and so on into the night.
My frat brothers would then turn to me and say.. “Ok how did we get to Topic Z?” and I would tell them, either forwards or backwards, which ever they preferred. weird.
I still had that until a few years ago. It really helped with Climategate, but now… not so much.
As A kid I just used to memorize the poetry our teacher would assign.. haha Poes raven Blew her away.. Still remembered it 20 or 30 years after.. same thing when I taught, just read it a few times and BAM. its locked away. not so much any more.
Met Bill Murray on the streets of evanston. he was wearing Pink corderouy shorts, with a very wide wale. brown shirt. Smoking a cigar. He passed me on the left and I turned to follow him into the mens clothing store. I did about 5 minutes of caddy Shack Lines impersonating him..”its a cinderella story…” I asked him for an autograph, he said it would be 1 dollar, I made a rude comment his mother, he laughed and signed his own dollar bill and gave it to me.
Met Paul Lynde and Mclean Stevenson those same years (1977-1981) cant recall what they were wearing, Mclean stole my date and she ended up riding in his Grand Marshall car in the homecoming Parade. Hmm Met Garry marshall, same time. cant recall what he was wearing.. Party mode I suppose. Bill Murray I remember.. exactly what he wore and even the pock marks on his face..
The Point: I have a less hard time believing that someone could remember an incident involving Trump.. both from her perspective and his. But Note. I remember exactly what bill Murray was wearing. I couldnt tell you anything about what the Clerk who waited on him was wearing. I’d be inclined to believe he could remember the cufflinks bit, but would doubt his ability to remember what she wore unless it was really stunning or odd.
he might recall the color… The red headed French lady was wearing black pants… certain bits and pieces stick..
the dialog, hair color, .. jeez name I cant recall. But the dialog, ya I remember.
but… he sounds like a publicity hound.. I suspect him on other grounds
The thing that gets me on the Trump accusations is that people who ought to know better are snapping it up. If you’ve been paying attention you know the media is in Hillary’s pocket. You know she plays dirty. But even so, a fairly obvious gambit like this comes up and people still swallow it hook line and sinker.
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It’s a powerful tactic. We are social animals, we care what other people think. Famous, well known psychological studies show that we will ignore the direct evidence of our own senses if they disagree with the apparent perception of the herd around us. This smear tactic imposes a social / psychological cost on anyone publicly supporting Trump and effectively changes the subject from any matter of substance on policy into a circus.
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Some of us know all this. Yet even knowing, many refuse to muster the will and effort to defy it. Vote for Johnson? When you could vote in a meaningful way against Hillary, one that has some small chance of keeping her out of the White House? My answer: I think that’s nuts. People are treating this like some abstract exercise, as if this is all beneath them. If Hillary can do this to a man with Trump’s resources, what hope do you have? How would you answer unsubstantiated allegations from many years past that you commit a sexual crime against someone? My answers – you’d have no hope, and you would be categorically unable to.
Mosher
It wasn’t hugely rude. Just not what people would talk about if the knew the women could overhear especially not if one was… well… considered not hot. They were discussing whether or not we were attractive. One yes; other no to so much. I was distinctly younger than the other one, so I was the hot one. 🙂 There was a little more but as I said, not hugely rude. Still, enough that they guys were embarrassed they assumed they couldn’t be understood.
Mosher,
The thing about my friends “photographic” memory is that she described it as not so much a good memory as merely literally photographic, and also short term. So, when the French teacher would announce a pop quiz on a list of 30 words, she could either (a) study the normal way people with non-photographic memories could and actually try to learn the words — possibly flashcarding and so on– trying to stuff into permanent memory over time or (b) she could “look” at the image of the page just before the test. Then during the test, she could bring up that list and get a 100% on the test.
The problem was later on she couldn’t bring up lists. And if we had to write essays, her mental photographs didn’t help her at all. Either the individual photos weren’t retained very long or she couldn’t sort through or maybe the photos didn’t end up preserved ‘right’. (She did learn French fine. But she said the temptation to use this ‘skill’ in French class was counter productive in the long run. Of course the skill was of no use whatsoever in math or in cases where one needed to apply the information. It was only useful when on needed pure recall with little thinking involved.)
I have a pretty good memory– but only of things I’ve noticed in the first place.
On people remembering the Trump incident. I definitely believe a woman would remember having been treated like that by a man. Absolutely. The guy across the row remembering something he reports being a “big nothing”? Not so much. He might… might not. And from what my friend told me about her “photographic” memory, that doesn’t make me think he’s any more likely to remember correctly than someone whose memory is merely good but not “photographic”.
FWIW: I tend to remember dialog and actions better than outfits. So if were across an aisle, I might remember things said and done, but rarely details of outfits– unless as you said they were odd.
I have played golf sporadically for years.
One of my greatest abilities is to be able to hit gum tree branches and the trees themselves with uncanny accuracy from any distance between 10 and 100 meters, possibly one out of every two hits off the tee.
The only other thing that comes close is hitting into a water hazard, no matter how small.
I doubt you will ever see it on film, the ability would probably vanish like esp on testing.
The mind is a marvellous instrument but can cause tricks like a belief in recalling details in the past perfectly in the future.
We have all been caught out in our belief that we recall something completely only to see an old photo or talk to an older sister or brother to find out that ones beliefs in the past can indeed be wrong.
Still, Bill Murray, I am absolutely envious, why do the good things always happen to somebody else?
Mark
I’m in Illinois; it’s way in the tank for Hillary. I can’t meaningfully affect the outcome but I can meaningfully affect whether the 3rd party gets federal election funds and whether they can get on the ballot automatically next time around.
You seem to assume that I or others accept the Trump allegations must be true. I think there is a lot of lying going on — at least some of the women are at a minimum gilding lilies. The British guy claiming he witnessed a non-event– I suspect he’s lying too. Or he’s deluded. (I suspect he did that on his own, not at Trump teams request.)
That said: he is a pig. I knew that before these allegations. I decided to vote Johnson before these allegations. Heck, I decided to vote for Johnson before the Billy Bush tapes. I’m doing so precisely because this is not an abstract exercise.
I know it can confuse some that some comment areas look like I assume Trump is “guilty” of the charges by these individual women. I don’t. Remember above we were discussing two different issues. (a) Trump filing a defamation suit and (b) the stories in context of decisions about votes. The issue of “doubt” in the context of those differ.
WRT to the election: I am agnostic about whether the stories are true or false. Maybe he did what the woman claim; maybe not. There are reasons they may be totally made up; there are reasons they are believable. In fact: if they are made up, someone did a good job rehearsing and making a lot of things credible. (My guess if they are made up, they were made up around a core or truth. As in: Leeds will have at least been on an airplane when Trump was there and so on. The stories are so long ago no guy in the world could defend against them. The stories were released right after Trump described behavior and they dovetail. Is that because he described what he actually does? Or because the stories were conconcted based on that? Dunno.)
WRT to defamation: Whether the stories are true or false, I think Trump has very, very little chance of winning any defamation suit. He can’t win against the NYTimes even if the women lied. (You can read the NYTimes lawyers letter- and I think it’s spot on.) He probably can’t win against the women unless the lying is proven beyond a shred of doubt — as in, he proves he was really in Zimbabwe on the day of the flight in 1981 and so on. I bet you dollars to donuts that even if the stories are made up, he’s not going to find the ‘evidence’ he needs to prove they are untrue. (As I said: even if Leeds made up this story, I bet it will turn out she knew Trump was on a flight she was on at some point. After that no witnesses would have been in her favor. And, oddly this Brit who “clears” Trump helps rather than hurts her. Because he at least puts her in the seat next to Trump!)
angech,
The answer is probably more mundane than you might expect. Mosher went to school in Evanston. Murray lived in Evanston. Evanston isn’t that big and the nicer parts are near the lake. That’s where the school (Nortwestern) is. Evanston is also quite nice, but not all that “fancy”. So the more prominent people wouldn’t have been holing themselves up inside gated communities or special enclaves where the ordinary people would not see them.
My encounter with Bill Murray: years ago, in a jazz club in the west village. I was standing behind him in the line for the (tiny) men’s room & it was taking a long time.
Bill Murray turned his head & said to me, “Guy must be working pretty hard in there.” I said, “Yep”.
Also, Woody Allen once trod on my foot on 2nd Ave, somewhere around 62d St.
Tks for yr attention.
Something else, Lucia, about Evanston,
In dark antiquity when Mosher was there, gated communities were very rare. I can’t think of any on the North Shore, at least in up to the ’70s. Gated Estates, yes.
On the photographic memory, Dad worked for 35 years for a guy who had it, at least as we understood it. And that was what it was called. He had nearly perfect recall of almost everything, at least up until he was in his ’40s. It was a mixed blessing for reasons which I’ll relate later – gotta get underway.
I think ‘photographic’ referred to precision and had nothing to do with visual recall; but that was how we saw it in the ’50s when it was dinner table talk at the Ferguson’s.
Problem with his version was it was that it was not selective – he remembered everything. He was a serious guy and very bright. He wasn’t given to parlor tricks, but once at a restaurant meal, he asked that the waiter return the dinner menu and give it to my dad. He then recited what was on one of the pages verbatim, not having seen it since we were ordering. He worried a lot about having his mind cluttered with this sort of thing.
The effect that this condition had on running the business, which essentially belonged to him and employed maybe 1,500 people at that time is more complex, and deserves a careful description which I’ll ponder how best to describe as we drive across west texas – a place i really love, btw.
j ferguson,
As far as I can tell, gated communities remain rare on the north shore. Gated communities tend to be newer subdivisions in places where someone took down a huge old farm and the developer decided they wanted to gate the community. Once built, someone has to man the gate and/or you need to annoying passes and so on.
I don’t even see very many out anywhere in the Chicago ‘burbs. If you get far out, there is no demand for gating. Close in, the neighborhoods already exist. No neighborhood is going to suddenly want to build a big gate around it. And even if they wanted to, it would tend to screw up existing traffic flow, so the City of Evanston probably wouldn’t be too happy with the idea and wouldn’t give permission.
Maybe someone could put a big gate around the perimeter of a bunch of houses all on the same block. But that’s generally not how gated communities work. Generally, they want to block cars from driving through.
All I can say is omg, omg are we in trouble. Podesta comment on Iran deal as revealed by wikileaks:
….
“An email exchange between Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and John Anzalone of Anzalone Liszt Grove Research shows the former apparently condemning the Iran deal.
In the email Anzalone shares a 2015 BuzzFeed article about the Iran nuclear deal in which Sen. Mark Kirk is quoted predicting that the agreement will lead to nuclear war in the Middle East.
Anzalone emailed Podesta the link to the article along with Kirk’s quote: “This agreement condemns the next generation to cleaning up a nuclear war in the Persian Gulf… This is the greatest appeasement since Chamberlain gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler.â€
“Yup,†Podesta responded to the email, which had the subject line, “You call it.†” See http://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2016/10/13/did-john-podesta-agree-iran-deal-worst-deal-since-the-1940s-n2231677
…..
Clinton is touting this deal as an achievement, and her own campaign manager calls it Chamberlain type-appeasement. Just amazing in a very bad way. When you put this together with Clinton most likely advocating the murder of Assange (I am not familiar with military law, but it seems to me that Assange would not be an enemy of the US or a combatant — so it does seem like murder advocacy to me)
….
I paid no attention to Benghazi because I figured that if Clinton did do anything seriously wrong, it would just be covered up by liars working for her and would be impossible to find out the truth. In fairness, it is possible that just by accident Clinton did nothing wrong. Now this leak indicating a horrible policy that is being touted as a good deal and evidence of her competence.
…..
People need a certain level of trust in the competence and honesty of the President for the federal government to function. No matter what happens I think it is gone. For instance, if Clinton is elected, how will we know if employment statistics are cooked or accurate.
JD
Discussion of photographic memories always brings to mind Borges’s short story, Funes the Memorious. I found it online here.
mark bofill (Comment #152589)
Mark, I think you have a full time job rationalizing your vote for Trump before worrying about those voting for Gary Johnson and their motivations.
I have always thought Trump was a conniving and boorish phony and the few times I watched his reality show for a few minutes the more convinced I was that it was actually worse than I thought. With that going for him it is not necessarily a leap in faith to believe he is capable of molesting women and lying about it.
I also get a kick out of hearing those rationalizing voting for Trump or Hillary – given their bad behavior – doing so for ideological reasons when both have come across as populists for the moment and willing to change on a dime to garner an advantage on any current emotional political issue. Hillary has admitted to having a private political stance for fund raising and a public one for getting the populist vote. Trump is certainly not consistent in any ideological fashion and seems able without any moral hesitation to make 180 degree ideological turns on issues. He plays politics like he played a make believe role for has reality show. I have been involved in making business decisions for a long time in my past careers and I think I know reality from make believe. Make believe sells better to the reality show audiences than reality and perhaps Trump thought that would work in politics. It well might have for someone with a less boorish personality than Trump has shown.
Did Trump plant the Brit Tory teen pimp tale?
We see use of pantsuit, she wanted to marry him, she was flirtatious, he gave her(or me?) cufflinks, no kissing, he excused himself.
Seems to cover all the details Trump would want out there, including a visual of he wants nothing to do with this aggressive woman.
You would think Trump would demand an aisle seat.
HaroldW, thanks for that.
I do not reach Funes level of comprehension in my waking hours, but I do have dreams where the minute details take my attention front and center. When I wake sufficiently I remind myself how unimportant those details are and sometimes that works but a few times I go back to dreaming details. It would indeed be a curse to have that problem in waking hours.
MIkeN
Not sure why he’d give her cufflinks if he wanted nothing to do with her. I get he’s rich so he migth want someone to think he could just go around giving away presumably expensive cufflinks for no reason at all.
Still, presumably he liked his cuff-links and didn’t have another pair on him. Would he then be running around with no cuff-links in his cuffs? It’s an odd idea.
Out of curiosity: I never really heard of Trump until about the time he dumped Ivana for Marla Maples which was 1989. Was he generally “known” in 1980? It seems to me he was just another business man no one knew back them.
mark bofill wrote; ‘many refuse to muster the will and effort to defy it. Vote for Johnson? When you could vote in a meaningful way against Hillary, one that has some small chance of keeping her out of the White House? My answer: I think that’s nuts.”
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I agree. At this point, Trump could shoot someone on 5th avenue and I’d still vote for him over Clinton. But my reason would be more to reduce the power of the elites that Clinton represents than Clinton per se (although that is bad enough).
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Voting for Johnson only makes sense if you are in a state where you can not influence the outcome (like lucia is) or if you don’t think it matters if Trump or Clinton wins.
Lucia,
Thanks for the clarification.
Kenneth,
and
So on the basis of what you’ve seen on these reality shows where make believe sells better than reality, it is not necessarily a leap in faith to believe that he is capable of molesting women and lying about it.
Thanks Kenneth. I apologize that I don’t have more time to chat, as you noted I’ve got a full time gig rationalizing my position.
Thanks for your response MikeM.
Photographic memory; The person who claims he has a photographic memory that exonerates Trump can easily be tested. Ask him some hard questions about what he has seen recently (say 2 weeks ago) and also about, let’s say an apartment he visited about 30 years ago. This is a matter that should mostly be easily resolved.
JD
JD,
That would be a way to test it. But we would need a photograph of the apartment as it looked when he visited it and we need to be sure he didn’t see the photograph and possibly that apartment any time recently.
I never tested my friend’s claim to having a photographic memory. We might have tested by asking her not only to translate words but to tell us the order of the words on the page. The fact that she reported both an upside and a downside made it somewhat plausible and the notion of photographic memory never important enough to test. Not sure why should would make it up, so my take is she at least thought she had that sort of memory.
Presumably some people do remember that way. But in her case, that type of memory wasn’t very useful long term.
Lucia: ” But we would need a photograph of the apartment as it looked when he visited it and we need to be sure he didn’t see the photograph and possibly that apartment any time recently.”
Not really that hard. All sorts of ways to test short term memory for sure. Also, long term, you could check with several past landlords, and test whether he remembered certain basic things — placement of stove, heaters, dishwasher et cet. Some landlords would remember color of rooms. Be ready with 4 or 5 long-term memory tests and if he does well on let’s say 4 out of 5, his memory is good. (Giving him pass on 1 memory test allows for mistakes by the information suppliers) This type of thing is something that competent lawyers are good at.
JD
JD,
Yeah, that would probably be a good test– provided landlords have records from more than 30 years ago.
I’m now trying to remember if I remember the layout of the kitchen when Jim and I first married (1984). It was small…. We would enter by a door which would have been on the left when we were facing into the apartment.
The kitchen was to the right. It was a typical galley kitchen found in small apartments. There were two walls and you could enter on either side. If we faced into the living room, the fridge would be behind and to the left. The stove sink was on the other side. But I honestly can’t remember if the stove was on the “fridge” side or the “sink” side.
Maybe I have a photo somewhere. . .
There’s nothing spooky about this. Jill Harth’s story and lawsuit is very old news.
Interesting RB. I find current stories that say she spoke out in July. I’ll need to chase down those July stories.
Thanks!
[Edit: I seem to be reading that she spoke with Guardian reporters in July. It seems strange to me that this story broke in July and yet nobody seemed to be aware of it until October.]
[Update: Thanks RB! I see that the NY times did have a hit piece back around that time. I’d never have realized it as I don’t read the Times.]
Still, lets see, May, June, July… hmm. The email still appears to predate this. Do you have a link to the story breaking someplace earlier than the DNC email?
Ah how silly of me! Ron Graf already posted here about it.
Here’s the link Ron posted again, talking about the NYTimes looking for someone with an axe to grind against Trump.
I guess that’s true, there’s nothing spooky about the DNC being involved with that at that time. To my mind though it weakens the credibility of the claim. [edit: I forgot the sarc tag. /sarc]
Thanks RB.
mark bofill (Comment #152607)
Mark, do you believe his recorded “locker room” remarks? Or was he simply lying then? He certainly appears to have a problem relating to women whether he was bragging or telling the truth in those remarks.
The problem with Trump’s behavior is that based on past party reactions to bad behavior he chose the wrong party. That may have changed with all the Trump true believers but an anecdotal incident I remember from many years back involved a Republican, Dan Crane (R-IL), and a Democrat, Gerry Studds (D-Mass), who were both members of the House of Representatives and from politically safe districts who were both involved in romantic incidents with underage pages. Crane was censured for having sexual relations with a 17 year-old female page and Gerry Studds (D-Mass.) was censured for having sexual relations with a 17 year-old male page. Crane was defeated for re-election in 1984 after being censured. Studds remained a member of the House until 1997.
Thank you Kenneth, I think your last comment is serious and merits a serious response.
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I absolutely believe that tape is real, Trump has acknowledged it and apologized for it. I agree that it is vulgar, unbecoming, and .. I don’t like it. I don’t speak that way and have on the two occasions I can recall when men have tried to engage with such banter with me found it unpleasant and disturbing.
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You got me there, just as Lucia does. I thought I’d acknowledged this with the ‘oink oink Trump’ remarks I made before – if this is your threshold for deciding the guy is a pig, I’ve got no quarrel with you.
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Is this evidence that Trump may mistreat women sexually? It is. It’s not conclusive, but it points in a negative direction. You got me here too.
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Did he choose the wrong party? You may well be correct there.
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If I may, I’d like to explain that I assume going in that everybody running for election is guilty of something. I assume (sometimes without evidence) that they are not nice people. Back while I was still considering voting for Hillary (and there was a period of time I was genuinely considering it), I knew perfectly well Hillary was a corrupt liar. This does not immediately disqualify her. Trump may well be a sexual predator. This does not immediately disqualify him. I tried to arrive at my decision with a focus on the question ‘where are we as a country, and what do we need?’
I think at this particular time Trump suits our needs better than Hillary Clinton. I think (and I’m pretty sure I’ve said, here for example), that we are missing the boat. All of these questions about the moral character and integrity of our politicians is misplaced. They are all dirty. I really don’t believe we’ve had an honest man in office since Jimmy Carter, and I wasn’t a fan of his.
So this is a given that our politicians are scum. It’s not a basis in my book on which to make a decision.
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A little more genuinely this time, thanks Kenneth.
Mark and Ron, that the NYT and WaPost will slant their investigations and reporting in favor of Hillary, or any Democrat for that matter, is not really a revelation. I think where you both are appearing to go is ignoring Trump’s bad behavior by attempting to make the issue one of fair reporting. Fair and unbiased reporting is not reality.
Maybe you can answer the question about Trump’s recorded “locker room” conversations. How are those to be interpreted? Do you believe Trump is truly sorry for that talk?
I think I’ve already explained why I’m not interested in Trump’s bad behavior. It’s bad. Oink Oink Trump. It’s not what we need to be talking about.
HERE is what I think we ought to be talking about:
1. Who do we want to appoint the vacant SCOTUS position?
2. Obamacare is failing. Should it be fixed or repealed, and who should we pick to get it done.
3. Our foreign affairs don’t seem to be going all that well. Why, what is needed and who is best to get it done.
4. Our economy has had a remarkably poor run since the last major crash. Why, what can be done, and who is best to get it done.
5. Seemingly every time an African American is shot by a police officer we suffer rioting in major cities. Why, what can be done and who is best … I’m sure you got this part a while ago.
6. We are twenty trillion in debt.
7. Is our government spending going to increase faster? Is our government spending a problem.
8. What to do with the illegal immigrants already here and the porous border
9. What to do about Syrian refugees.
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These are the items that come to the top of my mind. There are likely others. This is what we ought to be discussing. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are running for President, therefore assume going in they have bad behaviors and are immoral scumbags. Which immoral scumbag will be more damaging or more beneficial and in what way.
[Edit: gotta step away awhile.]
Kenneth Fritsch,
Trump’s comments on the tape should be interpreted as exactly what he says: He is an aggressive, serial womanizer who likes to brag about it. An oinking pig, like Bill Clinton and many other powerful men. I don’t like it, but why should that, or whether Trump is sorry, be relevant? To slightly modify what Mark said: Almost all politicians are scum.
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That said, Crooked Hillary is a particularly vile form of scum who not only enabled Bill’s bad behavior but put national security at risk for he own selfish ends and appears to have been at the center of a pay-for-play shakedown. The last two are far more serious in a presidential candidate than what Trump does.
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Again along the lines of what Mark said, these questions about private morality are misplaced. For the first time in years we have a real choice in this election. Do we endorse the open borders, globalization ideology of the establishment along with its concomitant policies of multiculturalism and political correctness, support for all of which is bought by bribing people with their own money and using social issues to divide and conquer? Or do the people stand up against the establishment and insist that America is for the American people?
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That is an easy, if grim, choice for me.
Right, Scott Adams (Dilbert) says the same thing:
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http://blog.dilbert.com/post/151791115686/assume-half-of-what-you-hear-about-the-candidates
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mark bofill (Comment #152620)
How do you Trump supporters who claim to be Republicans react to these comments:
Donald Trump on Universal Healthcare: “Everybody’s got to be covered, this is an un-Republican thing I’m going to say, I’m going to take care of everybody.â€
When asked, ‘Who pays for it?’ Trump flatly replied, “the government’s going to pay for it.â€
— CBS, “60 Minutes,†9/27/2015
Donald Trump on taxing the rich: “Well, basically, this would be a one-time tax, 14.25 percent against people with a net worth of over 10 million […] It would pay off in its entirety the national debt of $5.7 trillion, and you’d save $200 billion a year. So taxes for the middle class would go way down, the estate and inheritance tax totally wiped out, and the Social Security system would be saved.â€
— NBC, “Good Morning America,†11/10/1999
Donald Trump on whether he’s a Democrat or a Republican: “In many cases, I probably identify more as Democrat.â€
— CNN, “The Situation Room,†3/21/2004
Donald Trump on who’s the most qualified to make a nuclear deal with Iran: “Hillary Clinton. Hillary’s always surrounded herself with very good people, I think Hillary would do a good job.â€
CNN, “The Situation Room,†9/24/2007
Donald Trump on impeaching George W. Bush: “I’m very impressed by her [then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi], she’s a very impressive person. I like her a lot. She was going to really look to impeach Bush, and get him out of office, which, personally, I think would have been a wonderful thing.â€
CNN, “The Situation Room,†9/24/2007
Donald Trump on Obama’s economic stimulus: “I thought he did a terrific job […] I thought he was strong and smart, and it looks like we have somebody that knows what he is doing finally in office, and he did inherit a tremendous problem. He really stepped into a mess, Greta [Van Susteren].
Fox News, 2/9/2009
Donald Trump on the Democrats’ economic policies: “It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans. Now, it shouldn’t be that way. But if you go back, I mean it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats. …But certainly we had some very good economies under Democrats, as well as Republicans. But we’ve had some pretty bad disasters under the Republicans.â€
— CNN, “The Situation Room,†3/21/2004
Also, do you have any acquaintances that talk like Trump save maybe somebody that has a narcissistic personality disorder.
Kenneth Fritsch,
Now you are just trolling.
KF “How do you Trump supporters who claim to be Republicans react to these comments:…”
….
I wouldn’t call myself a Trump supporter — I am much more anti-Clinton.
….
Here is my response. By far the most important issue to me is the breakdown of the US borders and illegal entrants. We are close to a tipping point of anarchy where any sense of being a real nation will be lost. For instance, people in California have been seriously talking of letting illegal entrants vote. The Democrats are simply recruiting poor voters by opening the floodgates. If we can get a hold on this issue, we have a chance with others. If illegal entry into the US goes totally out of control, then we have no chance. Trump is right on this issue. The funny thing is that most people even Democrats agree with his general position. However, apparently to most Democrats, it is a second tier issue.
….
Second, any tenuous claim that Clinton has any competence to be President of the US has been destroyed by wikileaks. Her murder advocacy (small chance that Assange could be viewed as a combatant) and Chamberlain like deal with Iran, on top of her past 100% dishonesty and corruption totally disqualify her as a serious candidate for President. Right now her only real “qualification to be President is that she isn’t a groper. (Would add that if one thinks that the Iran deal isn’t as bad as Podesta thinks it is, it still reflects badly on her and those working for her. How could someone who believes what Podesta believes work for her election? She undoubtedly has an army of amoral operatives, who like Clinton, are only involved for reasons of their own personal gain.)
…
In regards to Trumps many non-conservative positions, I know he will turn on a dime and disappoint many conservatives, particularly social conservatives. That is his way and the way of virtually all business people — you advocate and bluff, and when your bluff is called, you cave and do the deal. Don’t think he will do that on immigration, which is my main issue.
JD
Clinton disaster as President vs. Trump disaster as President.
….
I have said before that I think there is a 90% chance that Trump will be a disaster and a 100%. Therefore I believe that whoever wins will be a disaster for their party in the following congressional election and following Presidential election. I could seriously consider not voting, if I were not concerned about how Clinton would corrupt the federal government, including the judiciary. She would only appoint corrupt people, and we may become something like Brazil or China, with no hope for many years of having a modestly honest and efficient federal government.
On the other hand, I am seriously concerned about what I would expect would be a severe reaction to a Trump presidency, but the long-term corruption of the Federal government makes that something I can just barely live with, if I vote for Trump and he is elected. Would add that with the wikileaks revelations and more to come, I think the Democrats victory laps right now are very premature.
JD
JD,
I think there is a decent chance (maybe 30%) that Trump will actually be good. I say that because he is a pragmatist and a deal maker who will seek to work with Congress and will be pushing policies that have broad support among the people. But the elites will try to block him and there is the possibility that he is just not ready for what he will be in for if he wins.
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As for the Clinton leaks, the main stream media is trying to bury them in “news” about the accusations against Trump. For example, see:
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/media/301009-is-there-actual-fire-in-the-smoke-of-trumps-media-criticism
Money quote:
“sizzle always trumps steak, sex always triumphs over substance. If you told me the coverage was 2-1 or even a 3-1 ratio of Trump to Clinton, you wouldn’t be reading this column right now.
But a story winning the lead over another is one thing. Devouring it to the point of almost total omission via a more than 23:1 ratio is quite another”.
Memory
Played cowboys on a train engine aged 5yo at primary school for 3 years. Massive like in films. Red colour large wheels higher than my head metal rungs to climb to the cabin big metal steering wheel climb out onto a wooden railing along the side walk ten feet and shoot the Indians.
Went back 20 years later no train oh well. Went to the Darwin wharf 25 years later. There was the restored train with sign.
Well memory be blowed It was about 15 foot long I was taller than it and it was green.
Mind you my memory is not photographic, it is a verbal soup which I pull things out of seemingly at random
Potential Legality of Drone Strike on Assange:
I have done a quick look at the law of drone strikes and it does appear that Clinton was advocating murder. Here are the laws that appear to apply.
….
“Article 51 of the UN Charter provides for a nation’s inherent right to self-defense when it has been attacked. [24] The UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions has said that Article 51 applies if the targeted state agrees to the use of force in its territory, or the targeted group operating within its territory was responsible for an act of aggression against the targeting state where the host state is unwilling or unable to control the threat themselves.” See http://drones.procon.org/
….
American law does not appear to permit it either. It has been summarized this way: “Presidential powers under Article II of the US Constitution allow the use of force against an imminent threat without congressional approval. [29] Additionally, in 2001 Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), authorizing armed conflict with al Qaeda and associated forces indefinitely. [30] The AUMF states that the President is “authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.” See http://drones.procon.org/
…
So for now, I think it is accurate to say Clinton was advocating murder.
JD
Angech: Memory
….
Your point about your memory failing you, is pretty much the point I was making. Lots of times we think we remember things but we don’t. (An issue that comes up at trials all of the time.) Would be interesting to see how much of Lucia’s 1984 memory is correct. I still have an image in my mind of my former boss’ wife smoking a cigarette at a party. Knowing her as I do now, I know that it is wrong and impossible, yet I still have the image in my mind.
Only a very few people would be able to remember accurately far backwards on anything but the most basic facts.
JD
Comment 152628) Disasters as President.
….Meant to say 100% chance that Clinton will be a disaster.
JD
Kenneth,
No, those are fair questions. I don’t think you’re trolling at all. I’m still busy unfortunately, but I look forward to answering you this evening.
more on Mike M.’s comment #152621
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This article expresses the point very well. On the details, to each his own. If this guy was in a debate it would be worth watching.
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http://www.nationalreview.com/article/441021/donald-trump-paul-ryan
mark bofill,
Jill Harth’s lawsuit was filed in 1997.
I think if he had such a good photographic memory, that could be determined from what he said two years ago about the Tories.
Regarding cufflinks, that detail does look odd. It is not clear that Trump gave the cufflinks to the woman. He has been reported to have given things like this elsewhere, including (what turned out to be cheap) watch to Charlie Sheen.
Lucia, I’d also not heard much about Trump so didn’t know all the tabloid stuff. I’m pretty sure he was famous even in 1980. He appeared on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous sometime in the 80s, and he played himself on The Jeffersons in 1981.
Thanks for the link, Ledite. If Kenneth Fritsch is genuinely interested in understanding why conservatives and Republicans should support Trump (and not just trolling as I accused him of) he can look there.
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I’ve gone back and forth re Ryan over the years. I am back to thinking that although he likes to figuratively wear a tricorn hat, he is really just another establishment Republican.
Kenneth,
Regarding Donald Trump on Healthcare, he said in 2015 the government would pay for healthcare for everybody. In 2016 during the last debate, he said repeal Obamacare and
no single payer. ~shrug~ I can at least hope then that if Congress gets him a bill to repeal Obamacare he will not veto it. I think Hillary would veto and push to ‘fix it’. I think this means single payer.
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Donald Trump on taxing the rich: Would that that were even possible today. It’s not, moot point. But if there was some realistic one time option to eliminate our 20 trillion dollar debt today, it’d be worth talking about, in my view. Just as important is balancing our budget and keeping it that way.
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Donald Trump on whether he’s a Democrat or a Republican: “In many cases, I probably identify more as Democrat.â€: Good for him! Seriously, it’s good to hear this. I agree with Democrats on some issues. I agree with Republicans on some issues. To my knowledge, I don’t agree with socialists on much of anything that isn’t trivial. Rigid ideologues generally don’t serve us well in my ignorant opinion, I’d prefer a pragmatic President.
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Donald Trump on who’s the most qualified to make a nuclear deal with Iran: “Hillary Clinton.” Sure got that one wrong, didn’t he.
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Donald Trump on impeaching George W. Bush: “I’m very impressed by her [then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi], she’s a very impressive person.”
Yah, my daughter’s aunt is one of Pelosi’s staffers. By accounts she ~is~ an impressive person. House speakers sometimes are. Many people with ideologies I disagree with can be impressive. By all accounts Fidel Castro was an impressive person; I don’t doubt it.
“I like her a lot. She was going to really look to impeach Bush, and get him out of office, which, personally, I think would have been a wonderful thing.â€
I’ve got no particular love of GW. So what?
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Donald Trump on Obama’s economic stimulus: Well, Trump and I can differ on that. Again, not the tune he’s singing these days, so who knows what his real position is? Hopefully better than Hillary, who I think will give us a direct continuation of Obama’s policies of over-regulation.
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Donald Trump On Democrats’ economic policies: In what he actually said, he’s right. Why should it bug anybody to hear this? I’ve asked myself if people thought a Hillary administration
would be anything like her husband’s, which seemed like a pretty bright economic time. And we have had some bad economic times start under Republicans. It’s always refreshing to hear from somebody who doesn’t seem to hold a political party up on an altar or a pedestal or whatever.
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Do I have any acquaintances that talk like Trump, no.
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So – more generally now. Either Trump appears not to have a lot of strong, long term convictions on how the country should be run, or he doesn’t answer questions honestly. To the best of my ability to determine, this is the same as Hillary. So why vote for Trump in preference to Hillary? (All of this is IMO): Short answer, Hillary is all about the status quo. Regardless of what she says, if I had to guess I’d guess she’ll continue Obama’s policies, she’ll continue catering to her special interests, and if it’s not too inconvenient she’ll cater to her progressive constituents, which isn’t my preferred ideology. I think Obama’s policies have brought us a lot closer to ruin than we were. Oh, as I’ve said; not a big GW fan either. For those who want to pin the housing bubble on him, I’m not going to argue about it. But Obama’s had eight years and we’re still in the toilet economically.
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The world doesn’t love us, doesn’t respect us, and doesn’t even fear us anymore. Trump might change that. He might not. I think Hillary will not change that.
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Instead of making progress towards any sort of immigration solution, Obama has actually made it worse in my view – insane as it sounds, I have genuinely wondered before if Obama is interested in solving the problem AT ALL. And so on, and so on. Do I know what Trump is going to do? Not really. Depends on what month and year you ask him.
Do I know what Hillary is going to do? Unfortunately, I think she’s going to keep the Obama course. So, my choices seem to be, vote for what amounts to Obama’s third term, or gamble it all on whatever might be behind curtain number two! What the heck. Obama’s third term sucks, what have I got to lose by rolling the dice?
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Other issues: I don’t really know if it’s true the ‘establishment’ and special interests runs the country or not. It might be true. If so, let’s get an outsider in and shake things up. Even if this isn’t particularly true, I think a shakeup in our bureaucracies would be beneficial. I do think the press is more than just favoring their candidate – sounds like they are in essence working for her. There’s a line between favoritism and a press that’s run by a political party, even if the press does so voluntarily and willingly; it’s one of practical degree more than anything else, but it matters. I’d like to see it thwarted. I more than disapprove of the press working hand in hand with dishonest politicians to manipulate the public.
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Thanks Kenneth.
RB,
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Another perfectly good theory, shot to heck. ~sigh~
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Thanks RB.
JD Ohio,
I’d been meaning for some time to say this regarding your comment on Ruth Ginsberg here.
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Maybe there are more approaches to judicial activism than we realize. Consider- a Supreme Court Justice effectively backed down and apologized to Black Lives Matter. I don’t think any part of that was accidental. What the heck; it’s not like she faces re-election. She can say dumb stuff and apologize with impunity. I suspect she did the whole thing deliberately.
Uhm, my response to Kenneth was TLDR, so here’s the readers digest revision:
That’s the essence of it.
Trump was a major donor to Scott Walker’s recall efforts. This is not something that someone who leans Democrat would do. Indeed it is possible the union legislation and Scott Walker’s governorship fail without Trump’s support. It had nothing to do with his personal business I think, and even if it did, it was(and is) more likely that Democrats will be governing in Wisconsin in the near future.
mark bofill (Comment #152641),
I agree with virtually everything you say, but have a couple quibbles.
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“Rigid ideologues generally don’t serve us well in my ignorant opinion, I’d prefer a pragmatic President.”
There is nothing remotely “ignorant” about that opinion.
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“Either Trump appears not to have a lot of strong, long term convictions”
I think he does have convictions. They just aren’t on the issues that we have been allowed to debate. He is opposed to identity politics, PC speech, and globalization. He thinks that borders matter, puts America first and thinks that our trade and immigration policies should reflect that. He will base foreign policy on our national interests, not so-called universal interests. He values entrepreneurship.
.
So far as I can tell, the “ism” that Trump seems to best line up with is paleoconservatism. That is derived from the traditionalist conservatives of 60 years ago, who did not have the reflexive anti-government stance of modern conservatives.
Thanks for the replies guys. In my opinion your answers point to the problem of a two party political system and the faith that a politician from a two party system will come along and fix a broken system.
Mike M,
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Thanks. I hope all that’s true, but I’m not sure I can support all that with persuasive evidence. It’s not ideal but sufficient for me that Hillary represents a status quo that’s proven to be a failure. But I do hope it.
.
Regarding Trump’s donations, I can find him saying this:
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Sounds like he knows how the game works to me. Hopefully he’ll upset some players. I think the Clinton Foundation is reasonable evidence that this is SOP for Hillary, so if he doesn’t do anything to change it, I don’t see how we’re worse off.
Kenneth,
Fair enough. I’ll admit that because a lot of GOP party leaders seem to despise Trump I hold out hope that he’ll act more like an outsider, but it’s not unlikely I’m being naive in that regard. Still, it all comes back to this- Hillary is the alternative, and IMO we have little to lose by gambling on an alternative.
Thanks.
[Edit: It’s not faith, it’s hope. I don’t perceive much cost to taking the chance on Trump, and at least some slim chance of gain.]
M Bofill Re: Ginsburg
What is revealing to me is that she didn’t even issue her own statement. It went through the Supreme Court office. Her co-liberals are trying to keep, what they think is a loose canon, quiet.
JD
Thanks JD.
Mark Bofill wrote: ” I’ll admit that because a lot of GOP party leaders seem to despise Trump I hold out hope that he’ll act more like an outsider,”
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I think that if the GOP leaders thought that Trump would not act like an outsider, we would see a lot more support for him, even after the October surprise. They don’t want Trump to win. It is not that he is insufficiently conservative, it is that he threatens the control of the existing elites. If Trump loses, he party insiders will go on like nothing happened.
.
Like you, my support of Trump is based on hope, not faith. My fears are first, that the elites may be so entrenched that Trump will just be battering a brick wall and, second, the possibility that Trump might be playing a long con for his own ends.
Party leaders hated Trump because of his immigration and free trade positions, at odds with their donors, and his isolationism.
They were even more against Cruz who was a threat to the entire lobbying system.
This particular leak from Wikileaks might be bad news for Hillary.
RB,
Is there a point to your post? Or are you just wasting our time? Maybe you know something about the person posting at your link that makes what is there make sense?
Mike,
🙂
He’s mocking the leaks as meaningless. RB was good enough to help me discard an invalid theory, so I’m feeling genuine gratitude towards him at this particular moment. I like to keep a sense of humor, particularly with regards to myself and my errors; RB’s jest helps with that too. After all, I went on about one [a leaked email] for a good while without doing a proper check of what I was saying. And it is sort of funny.
In short, to use the vernacular: It’s all good.
I just watched an hour long infomercial produced for Hillary by CNN exploring her life as a children’s and women’s issues advocate, true driving force behind successful aspects of the Bill Clinton’s career, and brave and stoic supporter of a flawed partner. After turning it off I could not remember why I disliked her. Then I started thinking – oh yeah, they skipped all mention of Saul Alinsky, White Water, 9900% return on cattle futures trading, raiding Vince Foster’s office and safe immediately after his suspicious death, having Foster’s documents found in her room at the WH, firing all the travel staff fired the same day the audit was to be done that found the improprieties for which they would be fired for, replacing them with her friends, creating a war room to destroy the Monica Lewinsky, making statements of the facts after meditation as to what would be least damaging at the time had they been actually true and scrubbing any evidence that could contradict her statements.
But then I think about creepy Trump, who confessed to abusing his power of celebrity to molest women. Let’s think why would Trump be confessing in private of inappropriate behavior and illegal acts, (which are creepy and associated with losers,) in casual conversation with an entertainment anchor? Why was the anchor eating it up? Perhaps it’s the same answer as to why he would threaten to jail a political opponent on a nationally televised debate and people applauded. Trump has a Howard-Stern-like tone, politically incorrect for effect persona he flips on more than occasionally. I don’t know if Howard Stern is a racist just because he does a skit called Black Jeopardy. It’s mean to produce groans, but harmless ones. Trump does not just insult women, he does everyone, including people he is dealing with. It’s only heated when he is counter-punching a viscous attack. He feels justified, even if his supporters wish that he ignored the attacks to avoid calculated baiting, which no foreign leader would do, only HRC, so I’m not sure that is a weakness.
MikeM asks rhetorical questions like a boss.
Hi Willard, give us your impression for HRC virtues and Trump evils. Do you have any problem with a press corps that sends their stories to the DNC for fact checking before publishing? Do you have any problem with the DNC’s plotting the Alicia Machado and possibly the video bombs months in advance? Do you have a problem with powerful interested colluding to effect our election debate per se — or only if they are alleged to be Russians? Should ill-gotten emails of political collusion be regarded as ripe for public consumption and debate? Do you think Putin wants Trump over Hillary? Why? (All real questions.)
.
Please answer in non-trolling way so that you can join us without moderation.
MikeM,
It does look like those were rhetorical.
But I also don’t think RB’s tweet made any sort of important point. In fact:
(a) There are many important revelations in wikileaks that make Hillary and the DNC look very bad and corrupt.
(b) Many make the mainstream press look bad and corrupt.
(c) Posting a screenshot of the email with the highlighting can be an effectively way to highlight the point someone on Twitter is trying to make.
That one could highlight something unimportant and trivial is true. But that’s not what’s happening with the wikileaks emails on twitter.
Some people may not like the fact that the screenshot/highlight technique is effective– and pretty fair — and works well on twitter, but that’s too bad for them.
Edit– I should add that the tweet RB linked which pretty much whines about the “screenshot/highlight” technique tends to suggest that the guy who wined can’t come up with good responses to the points made by those tweeting the real emails showing HRC, DNC and some in the mainstream press in a bad light. Because he decided to whine instead of making responses to the actual other points.
Lucia,
My questions were in no way rhetorical. Perhaps I would not have been so confused if I knew anything about twitter. Thank you for explaining what he left obscure.
Note to self: In future, ignore RB.
Edit: My questions were in no way meant to be rhetorical.
MikeM,
RB has been posting difficult to understand tweets. In this case, it was a link to a tweet — which was itself just someone trying to make a point on Twitter. Twitter itself involves a lot of lack of clarity. So it’s not surprising you had no idea what point RB was trying to make.
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have even clicked on RB’s link in that comment because I’ve found those are generally no more meaningful that “the bunny’s” mystery tweets. I only clicked because you commented. In fact: the “point” the guy on twitter was making was ridiculous.
Highlighting outrageous things people are finding in the Wikileaks emails is a generally a useful and effective and fair way of informing others about the bad behavior of HRC, the DNC and the mainstream media. That’s why the technique is being used on Twitter. And if that guy — who RB links to– doesn’t like the technique… booo hooo for him.
It actually ties back into the conversation I was having with RB before. Is the MSM covering WikiLeaks? Yeah, well, sort of. At least some outlets I’ve seen in the evening news mention them, speak a sentence or two and cut to Hillary’s people explaining why it’s not important. If the MSM was actually doing their job, we’d have a better idea of which are significant and which are dross. Turning to the alternative outlets, you can get some sense. You also get a lot of sensational crap, which doesn’t help. The reader still has a lot of fact checking to do, and I think many of the more sensational claims don’t stand up. But just because the MSM is giving WikiLeaks emails superficial coverage doesn’t mean there’s nothing in there.
[I’ll check back in later today. Community service day at Church this morning.]
Thanks Mark and sorry if I wasted your time. I didn’t fully read what Mike M wrote. But I understand that he is in pain.
The main stream media are not just biased in favor of Hillary, they are actively colluding with her: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/10/14/stuart-varney-now-know-for-sure-establishment-media-is-in-tank-for-hillary.html
RB,
Waste my time? Not at all. You rock my friend; you’re my fact checker! QA for Trump propaganda is good; I think we need a higher quality of propaganda if we’re going to prevail. I’ve been considering posting all the more plausible outrage stories making the rounds so you can help me improve on them, but. Who has time? [Edit: not really me. In fact, I gotta run and go feed a bunch of people at 308 5’th street in Huntsville now. Be back later!]
Maybe I’ll find some time later.
You can find Wikileaks coverage in the alternative-alternative media here . Things like these
RB, I was curious as to why the Jill Harth attempted rape case never made the news. I Googled it and found this article from last Feb where it explains that Harth filed the suit while her now x-husband was in a separate contract dispute with Trump. Harth dropped her claim at the same time the other dispute was settled. The case was dismissed without prejudice, which means she can file it again. So, reporters knocked on her door and asked what really happened.
RB,
So you like highlighting sometimes.
Ron Graf,
That is interesting but the Lawnewz article quotes Jill Harth as disputing their story and in July 2016 she stood by her allegations. Sexual assault allegations against Trump are at this point not significant news anymore unless in some instance the statute of limitations hasn’t run out.
Lucia,
I always like a good tease.
I attended a wedding outside Portland, ME this weekend. From a ~15-minute drive along residential back roads, here is my count of Presidential signs:
Johnson 4
Clinton 3
Trump 1
Stein 1
What I found most interesting was the relative scarcity of Presidential signs, compared to State Senate & House candidates; there were an order of magnitude more signs for the latter.
An unscientific survey, to be sure.
HaroldW,
Unscientific sample true. But I’m seeing the same thing. Usually, we’d see competing Presidential candidate signs. This year: nope.
RB, I read your link to the July Guardian story, that neglects to credit the Lawnewz story and instead claims themselves to be the first to interview Harth, but even so mention eventually the fact that Harth now has had many stories on this and admits opportunism.
The guardian never mentions the filing a sexual harassment suit while husband is in a contract dispute, or that she admitted embellishment.
It Trump were a perfect candidate he would have told the truth (to the letter) about the Harth incident. I find it hard to believe there was no advances on his part and that she made it all up. I find it very believable that he mistook her signals of wanting to impress him with genuine sexual interest in him and that turned awkward where Trump was too slow on the dropping of his interest. That in turn became a convenient lever in a law suit. She thought she had negotiated a truce and felt that calling her a liar was breaking the deal.
Come on posters, RB is merely doing Hillary damage control just like some of you are doing for Trump. I think in the end it has become obvious to me that you Trump supporters are admitting to holding your noses while voting. For that I give you credit. I cannot tell from the quips and links whether RB is doing the same for Hillary.
HaroldW (Comment #152672)
In my walks around my neighborhood there would normally be 15 to 20 signs up for a presidential candidate at this time in the campaign. This year I have seen only one and that was for Clinton.
I am of the opinion that a little humanizing (disrespect perhaps) for political office holders is a good thing. If anything good came out of the Nixon debacle it was that I noticed that people began realizing that these people governing us have plenty of human weaknesses and maybe more than average. This year that feeling I am sure has been reinforced. It will not too long before we will be hearing big government advocates crying about how this disrespect is bad for the nation and our very souls.
Lucia,
” Usually, we’d see competing Presidential candidate signs. This year: nope. ”
But usually the supporters don’t try to avoid being identified. Trump is unique in many ways, including motivating lots of people to disclaim support. The alternative (Hillary for four years!) is so distasteful for some voters that many are willing to vote for Trump in spite of him being a complete jerk, and in spite of his continuing offensive behavior. This is a sorry electoral year.
SteveF,
Yes. I think the lack of signs showing support for Trump or HRC is evidence few people want to tell their neighbor or passers-by that they actually support either. Lots of people will vote for one of the other. I don’t doubt that a fair number of people saying they will vote for Johnson or Stein will vote for either HRC or Trump– especially if their state has a close race.
But still, very few people are putting up public endorsements for HRC or Trump. Both are horrible. Horrible.
SteveF,
An sorry electoral year indeed. I’m absent minded and don’t always pay the best attention, but I don’t remember this sort of thing happening in years past. A GOP headquarters in NC got firebombed last night. Spray painted nearby ‘Nazi Republicans get out of town or else’.
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But I’ll go google it. Wouldn’t surprise me if it’s happened from time to time and I just never knew or forgot.
mark bofill,
Yes. The GOP headquarters were firebombed. So, at first glance, one has to assume this was done by those who are claiming to be the peaceful, loving side who does high when the other goes low.
That said: who knows? Until the find who did it, we can’t necessarily assume this was done by Demoncrats or Hillary supporters.
Lucia,
Yes, quite so. I may come across as a wild eyed conspiracy theorist from time to time, but I’m strangely confident that there wasn’t any high level DNC involvement behind this move. It’d be too insanely stupid. Do something dangerous and dirty that would accomplish nothing except generate support for the other party and outrage against democrats.
I readily accept Hillary and her people are dirty, but I really don’t think they’re stone stupid.
Mark Bofill,
“I’m strangely confident that there wasn’t any high level DNC involvement behind this move.”
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Yes, very unlikely. Still, there is a visceral level of distrust that I think reaches a new high, at least over my 44 years of presidential voting. There is so little willingness to compromise on substantive issues (fossil fuel policies/global warming being just one of many) that the national fabric seems to be fraying. No candidate addresses this; they appeal to their ‘base’ and will not commit to future compromise on substantive issues. The weird thing is that Bill Clinton did in fact compromise on substantive policy (when he wasn’t pursuing interns, at least). I don’t see even a shred of compromise in Hillary…. too certain she is right to ever compromise. Very much like Obama: too motivated by ideology (and arrogance) to ever compromise on the substance of any issue. If the Republicans manage to hold one or both houses of Congress, there will be mostly gridlock for 4 years.
SteveF,
I think you’re right.
An observation from the wedding: The officiant read Desiderata. A titter ran through the audience when he came to the line, “Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit.” Don’t know about the other folks, but I know who came to my mind!
mark/steve,
I am reasonably confident there was no high level DNC involvement in this. But I would not be surprised if those who torched the GOP HQ weren’t DEM’s. That said: this election cycle, who know? They may turn out to be independents or GOP themselves.
Still.. for now, most likely low-level, non-high-level Dems seem more likely that the other possibilities. We’ll see what the cops learn.
Lucia,
Yes. My guesses involve four or five somewhat overlapping categories:
1. Lone nutcase. It’s sort of a crazy thing to do any way you look at it, so this overlaps other cases. Say – lone extremist or lone fanatic maybe.
2. low level Dem. Have to be an awfully dumb one.
3. false flag operation by low level GOP. Still pretty darn dumb.
4. false flag by higher level GOP? I wouldn’t put it past them. Hillary does not hold the monopoly on crookedness.
5. Misguided BLM thug.
SteveF,
I think whoever wins will rule by executive order and bureaucratic appointment for the next four years.
I think gridlock is unrealistic. The presidency is no longer held in check by the legislative branch for most issues. The power of the purse is no longer effective when there is not agency accountability to funding and overall funding cannot be withheld without a politically suicidal shutdown. The only thing holding the status quo now is the lame duck presidency and before that the an evenly divided supreme court. Once the court is shifted from new liberal members there is no turning back.
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The liberal media will be no check on liberal government as can be seen by Donna Brazil giving debate questions to HRC in advance and editors submitting their papers to the DNC for approval. America will be reliant on Australian owned Fox News to be a lone investigative force. If we can remember, Fox had broken the true story on what happened in Benghazi on 9-11-12 just days after the attack but that did not stop Susan Rice’s implementation of Michael Morell’s crafted talking points. By the time the smoke cleared people had already chosen Obama.
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Does anyone have an opinion on why the Russians would help Trump?
On gridlock, that is to some extent a consequence of our system of checks and balances. This is what happened in the early 19th century with regard to slavery. Nothing really happened because the country as deeply divided.
Usually change happens when things get sufficiently bad. I had thought this election might be such a change election, given economic stagnation, historically high income inequality, and blatant government, press, and business corruption that is I believe is as bad as in the gilded age. But I’m not sure now. This campaign is in many ways similar to 19th Century elections, with libel being common.
One thing is certain. The whining from the press and the “establishment” about the tone of the campaign is just that. Democracy is messy and often libelous and nasty.
David Young,
“Democracy is messy and often libelous and nasty.”
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Sure, but this election cycle is nastier than most. Harder to be nasty with someone like Eisenhower.
David, gridlock is purely a consequence of checks and balances. It is the primary reason that the USA foreign policy in the Cold War was to support anti-Soviet dictatorships rather than democracies. It is why the USA hesitated to attempt to set up democracy in Iraq after Saddam’s overthrow.
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I believe there is evidence that western capitalists supported Mussolini and Hitler as anti-Soviet buffers because of democracy’s vulnerability. The miscalculation was that Hitler would be so successful and expansionist as to convince Stalin to shake his hand for a promise of half of Poland. If my suspicion is true the Cold War started in 1918 after war became as unthinkable as communism for the Morgan-Rockefeller-Ford-Dupont-Hearst coalition. At this time of laissez faire capitalism the government needed to grow an intelligence service. Now I think we have shifted too far in that direction. I am for less secrecy and less spying foreign and domestic. A robust democracy in Iraq would have prevented the jailing and persecution of rival coalitions. The dynamic prevents successful self-restraint (unless you’re George Washington). Law Professor Jonathan Turley is a liberal constiutional law professor at Georgetown U who believes our democracy health is increasingly precarious.
Ron
“I think whoever wins will rule by executive order and bureaucratic appointment for the next four years.”
I think we may sometimes forget how much we can learn from our mistakes. This image of the Supreme Court protecting our freedoms from an overly enthusiastic government and the limitations of the powers of the executive not to arbitrarily change laws passed by the legislative branch should have been revealed as a false one in the past several years and not the one of the idealist image of government by which some might have been influenced by Civics 101 propaganda. When the process of government and increasing government powers can no longer find legitimacy in these false images I judge we will have made progress – or at least to the point that people will be aware of the potential and existing far reaching powers of government.
By the way Democracy without strictly held constitutional limitations is not messy but rather tyrannical.
Kenneth, I am afraid people cannot learn true lessons when the media can and will redirect responsibility to any foe assigned by the left. Jews in 1930s Germany were the cause of any number of ills, including the loss of the Great War. We can only see now from here the effect of propaganda. Today all economic ills, according to the left, were caused by the Bush Tax cut, which was inspired by the flawed and corrupt Reagan inspired trickle down.
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Professor Turley is one of those who believed in the Civics 101 propaganda. And, apparently he takes it more seriously than “the cause,” thank goodness.
visited friends in Fort Smith, Arkansas. There were 2 HRC signs and 2 trump signs on their block a week ago. The Trump signs are gone -taken down by families that put them up. Replaced by local republican candidates.
Only place we saw a lot of Hillary posters was Haight Asbury two weeks ago. also Bernie posters. still no bumper stickers for either one of them – we’re up to 10k miles, in Little rock heading for the barn.
Ron, I’m not sure our democracy in more precarious than during the 19th century. But technology has introduced the possibility of covert control by government that was not possible then. That is a problem I agree.
Yes Ron, Having a balanced press is important because of the increasing power of electronic media. Right now we have a very corrupt mainstream broadcast media that has really chosen sides. At least in the 19th century, people knew the media was “yellow.” Many are duped in the 21st century.
In other news:
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A former FBI agent, as reported by Ronald Kessler of the Dailymail, claims that he and others had recorded witnesses stating Hillary lashed out at Vince Foster in a large meeting a week before his death and that reports of this disappeared from the Starr investigation archive. They did a FOIA for them and came up empty.
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I had not read about this meeting in which HRC was to have humiliated Foster in any of the Rodriguez notes. Ronald Kessler, also said that Foster was seen to be very depressed the week before he killed himself and that all the initial mysteries regarding the evidence of manner of death were laid to rest with subsequent investigation, which must have come from the same FBI sources.
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There is no way in heck those facts are accurate. To recap:
1) A high velocity .38 round like the ones in the untraceable gun (with no prints on it found in his hand by the third investigator) at the scene would have created a huge exit wound and blood pool.
2) No investigator saw a large wound or blood pool, including those who removed the body from the scene.
3) The first witness who found the body had to closely study it to determine that he was dead and only saw a small trickle of dried blood at the side of the mouth (and no gun in open palmed hands).
4) There could be no forensic investigation since the bullet was never found, x-rays destroyed then denied taken and as the same for crime scene photos, except for a few low quality Polaroids.
5) All witnesses to Foster’s demeanor, including his wife, daughter, Linda Tripp, Web Hubble and Bill Clinton all said initially there was no change in personality. Almost all changed their stories in later statements, after the unsigned suicide note (that did not mention suicide but only a list of reasons to resign) was found in undetermined handwriting days after the death in Fosters office that had been under the control of Hillary’s staff.
6) Also found not until a considerable time after death were car keys. The ones photographed as evidence are not for a Honda, which was Foster’s car make. They also were not reversible sided as are all Honda keys.
7) The rug and hair fibers found on his suit and undergarments were never matched, identified.
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Kessler’s informant smacks of spreading a false flag to muddy the water. The heated meeting never happened is my judgment.
Kenneth Fritsch,
I just came back from a party and I heard so many new “details’ people had dug up from Wikileaks – something about Podesta’s wet works program to kill people, some doctor who operated on Hillary’s brain clot and got secretly knocked off. All preceded by “I don’t personally believe in conspiracy theories.” Then I come home and it takes two minutes to debunk all of these rumors, and I wonder whether the googles doesn’t work for them. So, whenever the googles are working for me, I do my bit. And in answer to your question, I have inhaled and I wish the same for you all.
———-Genuflection alert——
Hillary is a muddled evil person
—————————————-
Provenance of WikiLeaks Podesta Emails? Aren’t these the Russian intercepts? Some of you guys believe them?
Nuts. (no, not you – just in general).
J Ferguson,
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You seem to be saying that at least the Podesta batch of emails are not credible. I’m not sure if you are asking or asserting that they are ‘Russian intercepts’. I don’t know what you mean by ‘Russian intercepts’. The term ‘intercept’ implies to me that you think the Russians ‘intercepted’ something and changed [that something]. I know of no evidence supporting this idea.
.
I believe I have read writing which suggests that Russia is feeding WikiLeaks. In this bizarre election cycle, it is difficult to sort the valid information wheat from the chaff, despite RB’s bland assurances that he can find the answers with googles.
.
If you have some solid evidence or argument that discredits any part of WikiLeaks material, I’d be grateful to hear of it.
Hi Mark.
Of course I don’t know that the Russians are feeding WikiLeaks. But I suppose you don’t know they aren’t.
I choose to ignore stuff which seems amazing without any sort of corroboration. But i would concede that it depends on what the stuff says.
J ferguson,
.
Thanks. Your response neatly sums up my frustration. It’s darn hard this cycle to figure out what’s likely to be true and what’s not. None of the players appear to be particularly trustworthy.
Perhaps Trump is indulging in a massive piss-take. The best the free-world (I use the term loosely) can come up with is a choice between a dick and a crook.
Trump and Putin will be enjoying the joke.
J,
I’m guessing about what you were thinking. I’m guessing that you read RB’s post and concluded that there is a WikiLeaked email that ‘proves’ Podesta had knowledge of a ‘wet works’ operation.
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There is not, at least so far to the best of my knowledge. The froo frah comes from this email and an unfortunate coincidence in timing:
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It doesn’t just strain credulity to conclude this refers to Scalia, it shatters it. A plot to assassinate a Supreme Court Justice, and Podesta is in on it? and he’s casually dropping references to it in emails? Heh. Rhetorical questions, my answer: I don’t think so. I find it much more likely that the words are metaphoric and reference something else. Snopes suggests it was a reference to planting a negative story about Sanders; that sounds a heck of a lot more plausible to me.
.
But nothing in this really discredits WikiLeaks. It discredits what some people can spin out of leaked material.
Mark,
I’d been hoping I could assemble a good pitch for why, despite their loathing for Hillary, readers in swing states should vote for her, but I can’t satisfy myself that she isn’t more dangerous than Trump. I’m going to do it myself, but it’s not comfortable for me by a long shot. I agree completely with what Lucia is doing. Voting Libertarian is not ‘none of the above’. I did it in 1980, I suppose lacking confidence that Reagan was up to the job – and hoping to discourage further increases in the bureaucracies which were making my professional life a nightmare, EPA for example.
But alas.
I confess to reading WashPo, Politico, about half the stuff that shows up on RealClearPolitics, Ross Douthat at NYT, And Peggy Noonan.
Doesn’t anyone here wonder why Charles Krauthammer is not supporting Trump? Why apparently no newspaper has endorsed him?
As to Trumps business prowess. It appears that he’s made a lot of mistakes. Trump Airlines, The Plaza, the ventures at Atlantic City, etc. Of course he came out of them ok, but….
When I was hiring technical managers i used to ask in the interview what was the worst thing they’d done since getting into the business, what happened, and how did they deal with it. I was reluctant to hire anyone who didn’t have a story, thinking that if they hadn’t made mistakes they hadn’t worked on difficult things, or they didn’t know they’d made them, or couldn’t face it. In construction the worst thing you can have is someone concealing a screw-up.
But as a president, do you really want one who makes colossal mistakes on an almost annual basis?
I concede that a lot of us think we already have one and that Hillary would just be another. But I don’t. Some problems have no good solution, and a lousy solution could make things worse – my view on the Syria mess. I’m also a respecter of ‘doing nothing’ when ‘anything’ is very likely to be disastrous. Think Syria some more.
Trump clearly is the lone ranger. Tonto? There isn’t one. I cannot see him being influenced by anyone. His could not be a regency, but more the closest thing we’ll ever see to a dictatorship. Hillary, on the other hand, does apparently listen to other advice and would likely be responsive to strong objections within her administration to some proposed action. Of course I wonder how she sold the Libya misadventure (to put a polite face on it – Well FU is more appropriate). In this case, it was just because all the Europeans agree with you doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.
I’d like to stay home, like I did in 1964, but there are, to me, so many reasons why Trump should be dis-Penced with…
J,
IMO that’s not unreasonable. I agree with a lot of what you just said and arrive at slightly different conclusions, but I certainly understand and respect where you’re coming from.
[Edit: It’s all good. It’s still a free country.]
Time to hit the road. Eastern Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama as far as Birmingham. This time not on the Interstates. more bumper sticker sign reports.
It’s funny that the Trump Pence signs seem to me so much more graphically adult than the Hillary ones. They are simple, colors good, legible, etc.
RB
Maybe you should consider alternate theories rather than the one you prefer. Perhaps google works fine for them. The just don’t find the “debunkings” you think convincing to remotely convincing.
I don’t know about others here, but I generally don’t find you able to “debunk” any rumors. So I tend to doubt you found many “debunkings”. And beyond that, I really don’t believe you can google to find solutions to many rumors in two minutes. Google is speedy, but each search takes time and reading the information at the “debunking” site also takes time. That you make such an unbelievable claim about the speed with which you can find the “debunkings” tends to undermine your claim.
But go ahead ahead and give us a list of each rumor your friends told you of and then tell us how it has been “debunked”. Then we can all benefit from your awesome ability to debunk all of wikileaks in 2 minutes!
mark bofill
Precisely. It is certainly true that some interpretations are over the top and dreamed up by hyper-ventillating Hillary haters. But that doesn’t mean other quite bad interpretations aren’t correct.
Mark Bofill: “But nothing in this really discredits WikiLeaks. It discredits what some people can spin out of leaked material.”
As usual, an entirely sensible comment from Mark.
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j ferguson: “Doesn’t anyone here wonder why Charles Krauthammer is not supporting Trump? Why apparently no newspaper has endorsed him?”
I don’t think it is a mystery. Trump is not one of the elites/establishment and he threatens their privilege and power.
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Trump does make make “colossal mistakes on an almost annual basis”. Even if he did, that would amount to maybe 10% of the deals that he has made. Not bad. He is either incredibly brilliant or takes and weighs advice from capable people.
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Hillary might indeed be less likely than Trump to make big blunders. But that is not the problem with Hillary. The problem is the general direction in which she wants to take the country and the entrenchment of elite privilege that she represents.
j ferguson,
“… just because all the Europeans agree with you doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.”
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Which has a corollary: The greater of fraction of European governments that agree with you, the more likely the result will end up being FUBAR. 😉
Mike M,
“The problem is the general direction in which she wants to take the country..”
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Yes, generally in the direction of Europe. See my comment to j ferguson on Europeans and FUBAR.
RB (Comment #152698)
Debunking some conspiracy theorists interpretation of an email when there are more reasonable interpretations of the emails that would also be negative is part of the repertoire of those doing damage control. It reminds me of those who come to these blogs in discussions on AGW and take on those who do not recognize the basic physics of atmospheric GHGs and its affect on global warming and ignores the more reasonable arguments that are negative with respect to a typical warmist POV.
RB, should not that have been a mocking alert?
J Ferguson, when you say:
“Trump clearly is the lone ranger. Tonto? There isn’t one. I cannot see him being influenced by anyone. His could not be a regency, but more the closest thing we’ll ever see to a dictatorship.”
you bring forth an important point about government and the restraints that currently exist on it.
While my loathing of Trump is probably beyond what you have for him, I would think if we have given powers of a near dictatorship to our government it is those powers that should be of greatest concern to us. Given a polite, well-mannered and well-spoken president who is well received by the main stream media with the intent to use all the powers of his office versus a one with similar intentions who is a vulgar, boorish and lone ranger president who is hated by the main stream media, which president do you think would have the easiest path to actually exercising that power? It would be the Obama-like one every day of the week.
What I say here is certainly not an endorsement for Trump or a similar Trumpian candidate (I will either not vote this November or vote for Gary Johnson) but rather to make a point about giving government power to politicians and those most likely to succeed in using it – given the arbitrariness of its application.
Kenneth,
“It reminds me of those who come to these blogs in discussions on AGW and take on those who do not recognize the basic physics of atmospheric GHGs and its affect on global warming and ignores the more reasonable arguments that are negative with respect to a typical warmist POV.”
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That is correct. Most who support immediate and drastic action to reduce CO2 emissions focus on silly claims by people who really do not understand the basics. Focusing on the confused is far easier than addressing reasonable doubts. It is simple to say ‘adding GHG’s will cause warming’, but not simple to say how much warming, the magnitude of impacts (both negative and positive) due to that warming, and the resources which can rationally be dedicated to reduce that warming (eg the discounted net present value).
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Discussions of those kinds of subjects do not lead to automatic ‘debunking’ of ‘den!ers’…. and so are mostly avoided. When they are discussed, it usually turns out great urgency for immediate action is based on either dubious data, dubious reasoning, or both, like an assumed sea level rise of 2 meters in 85 years (totally nutso!), ‘inevitable’ sea level rise of 80+ meters over ‘several thousand years’ (extremely dubious!), insisting on a NPV discount rate of zero to justify current cost of public action (not how rational people spend money!), etc. A substantive discussion shows the disagreement is fundamentally about politics philosophy, and morality. Real discussion of the nitty-gritty details casts doubt on the need for ‘immediate and drastic’ public action.
Kenneth Frish
I suspect you are correct with one caveat:
Will the either one have a tendency to order the military out when it strongly ill advised? Or launch a first strike nuclear weapon?
I think neither Trump nor Hillary are remotely likely to do the latter. I think either might do the former– and both are equally likely to do the former. So that’s a wash.
After that: we have the question of a President trying to override separation of powers. Obama has already been working hard to do that. The courts have been only thing that has been in his way. He’s popular with the press and they certainly have not.
So with regard to maintaining separation of powers– which is one of the best things about our constitution– a president who is not popular with the press would be better. Either may be sufficiently unpopular — or at least she isn’t really popular, she’s just less unpopular than Trump. Trump most certainly is very unpopular (for good reason. Actually, there are good reasons both are unpopular)
Lucia,
I agree that Kenneth Frish has made a very good point that you quote in Comment #152720. But I can’t quite agree with some of your other comments.
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You wrote: “Will the either one have a tendency to order the military out when it strongly ill advised? … I think either might …”
If you mean large scale action, you are probably right. But Clinton will be much more likely to use the military for “limited” actions, like a no fly zone in Syria, that may not expose the military to much risk but might have all sorts of unintended consequences. I don’t think Trump will deploy the military at all unless vital interests are at stake, in which case he will use the full force that is necessary.
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You wrote: “… separation of powers. Obama has already been working hard to do that. The courts have been only thing that has been in his way.”
Clinton will appoint justices that are fully on board with leftist expansion of power. At least conservatives justices tend to have some constraint and respect for the constitution.
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You wrote: “… a president who is not popular with the press would be better. Either may be sufficiently unpopular”
What matters is not the personal popularity of the president, but whether the press supports the policies being pushed. We already know that the press is fully on board with Clinton. And she will get zero opposition within her party, whereas Trump will get at least some opposition among Republicans.
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Trump is actually the much less dangerous candidate.
David Young,
“Democracy is messy and often libelous and nasty.â€
I prefer the s-words. Smear, slander, slime. Reasoned arguments? blah blah blah, not listening. Something salacious? Now you’re talking, and so is everyone else. We’ve passed the OJ record already. Why? Because it works. Dan Quayle can’t spell potato. toast. Sarah Palin can see Russia. toast. Donald Trump is a pig. toast. It doesn’t matter if any of it is true. Mitt Romney was a nice guy. Nice guys finish last. The electorate usually chooses the best father figure. No chance of that this time. The last two times, it was more “bro” than “pa”. Enjoy democracy while it lasts.
A no fly zone in Syria, means shooting down Russian planes. Clintons’ choice for President in 2004 ordered NATO troops to seize an airport from the Russians in Yugoslavia when Bill was president. I suspect this action and the whole Kosovo action is why Putin is so upset with the Clintons.
Kenneth,
I don’t loathe the despicable Donald?
Shirley you jest
Lucia, many of the Wikileaks articles can be debunked just by going to the article, reading the e-mail, and realizing it doesn’t match the headline.
Mike M: “Trump does make “colossal mistakes on an almost annual basisâ€. Even if he did, that would amount to maybe 10% of the deals that he has made. Not bad. He is either incredibly brilliant or takes and we”
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Yes. As J Ferguson pointed out someone who doesn’t have war stories is someone who hasn’t faced difficult problems or someone who doesn’t know that they had screwed up. If HRC does not admit that intervening to oust Mubarrack, Assad and Qaddafi then she will do it again. Personally, I don’t believe if there is a specific formula for intervention but the world wars taught us that world instability can always worsen if not addressed. For this reason I am not a full Gary Johnson or Rand Paul-style libertarian but a Reaganite without the social conservatism.
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There are plenty of eloquent speakers who can’t get a darn thing done and also the reverse case. Trump is wise enough to know problems need to be confronted but also cautions must be heeded. The Obama-Clinton-Kerry foreign policy has been mix of reluctance and a day-late-n-dollar short, inviting others to eat our lunch. Trump knows strength comes from opponents respecting your will to act but not knowing how and when that response would come. One must foil the chess gaming and maneuvering that Putin relishes.
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Trumps challenge will be in mastering the teleprompter to garner popular support. Success will make that easier. His give-em-hell temperament is just what the country needs. He is not friend of the Tea party, GOP, progressives, special interests or press. He will indeed be the lone actor.
MikeN,
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Yes. Mostly when there is a point to be had from the leaks, it’s pretty plain in looking at the email. For example,
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I think that speaks for itself. FWIW, it has occurred to me that maybe the ‘birthday’ part is a joke. Unfortunately I doubt the million dollars is a joke.
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My trouble isn’t really sorting out the theories. [Edit: oops, not a very clear transition. About the WikiLeaks emails themselves:] Merely that they are torpedoing Hillary is not evidence that there are pristine and not tampered with. All that makes them is convenient. Maybe some of them are tampered with; how would we know. The folks who point out that Russia may be involved may well have a point. So I don’t like that uncertainty.
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If we consider that WikiLeaks may be more or less accurate, then IMO we ought to consider the degree to which the press may be working hand in hand with the DNC and the Clinton administration. Which leads me to – I have even less trust in MSM than usual. If we examine the emails that talk about the money and the corruption, IMO we might be justified in questioning how rigged the system really may be overall. Do I imagine that the GOP operates differently in any substantial way. Do I trust outlets that have leaned conservative in the past. Do I trust Newsmax. Do I trust Fox News (Hey, no snickering back there!). Beats the heck out of me. How far should I trust polls. How much is rigged.
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Even treading as lightly and as skeptically as a gullible partisan such as myself can manage, it’s a walk into the twilight zone for me to think about this stuff.
After seeing Ron’s comment, I realized that I have a typo in my Comment #152713. In case it is not obvious from context, I meant to say “Trump does NOT make “colossal mistakes on an almost annual basisâ€. Even if he did, …”.
mark bofill wrote: “Maybe some of them are tampered with; how would we know. The folks who point out that Russia may be involved may well have a point.”
Scott Adams has an interesting take on this: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/151933602961/lie-detection-and-scandals
Of course, he is usually interesting, but this time I think he makes a valid point. When you blame the messenger you are trying to deflect attention from the message.
Mike M.,
Yes, I saw that. I read Scott Adam’s blog.
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All of this IMO and AFAICT:
There are no impartial players in this game. I don’t trust any of them. If one of them happens to be telling me the truth, it’s only because the truth in this case works better than a lie.
[Edit: and that is where the headaches come from. Trying to figure out what statements might serve what actors to what ends. It’s probably a hopeless snarl to untangle, but. ~shrug~]
But a few things seem clearer than others:
1. Hillary Clinton didn’t want her emails to go public, pretty clearly.
2. A lot of email is going public, and instead of a lot of bold, unambiguous, direct statements that these emails are false, I seem to be seeing a lot of minimization and ignoring and insinuating that the emails are false instead. Here’s CNN’s Chris Cuomo trying to scare people away from looking at them, and promising that the media will let us all know what we need to know about them. SNORT.
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What I can unequivocally make of this: Hillary Clinton’s mendacity with her emails is the main reason we are in this mess in the first darn place. This is far from my chief reason for not wanting Hillary elected, but it ranks. We can’t operate this way, this is a mess. People need to be able to have some limited confidence in their government. Lies, corruption and coverup will always happen, but the loss of confidence this brings is a bit over the top.
Marc, Wikileaks has been very unpopular, but I am not aware of any forgeries by them in the past. Doesn’t mean the current ones are valid, but if there are fakes in there, they are a waste of time. There haven’t been many smoking guns. Now if the goal was to disrupt the enemy with little fake e-mails of people talking about each other, that would have required better timing I think.
I remember we thought ClimateGate fake because some of the e-mails were so over the top, particularly hide the decline.
Chris Cuomo is utterly wrong about legality of access to emails:
Eugene Volokh (first amendment expert– really) wrote about this (and has before
[Mike N.],
Yup, that’s true as well.
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It’s got to stop. Hillary’s candidacy is obviously being protected, so I don’t think she’d be the one to stop it.
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Is Trump involved in these shenanigans? He might be. Ron Graf has asked if anyone has an opinion on why Russia might want to help Trump. I can imagine / make up reasons. I don’t know.
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Trump might help. Hillary won’t. I usually end up back at this conclusion somehow.
Lucia,
Yes, I meant to raise that here and ask your opinion. I got sidetracked. It sounded wrong to me. 🙂
Funny and very disconcerting at the same time: ““[Redacted] explained that CLINTON’s treatment of DS agents on her protective detail was so contemptuous that many of them sought reassignment or employment elsewhere,†the interview summary says. “Prior to CLINTON’s tenure, being an agent on the Secretary of State’s protective detail was seen as an honor and privilege reserved for senior agents. However, by the end of CLINTON’s tenure, it was staffed largely with new agents because it was difficult to find senior agents willing to work for her.†See http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/17/fbi-docs-hillary-was-so-unpleasant-security-agents-didnt-want-to-protect-her/
Also, some people have intimated here that wikileaks emails may not be authentic. I think there is a very high probability that they are authentic based on two factors. 1. As far as I know, no one in a position of authority has claimed they are fake; 2. When Clinton deflected (really a sophisticated form of a lie) that she didn’t remember joking about killing Assange, she implicitly confirmed the authenticity of that very damaging email. If it wasn’t authentic, she could have easily said so. She didn’t.
JD
JD,
Yeah. 🙂 I think that part of the code is cracked. When Hillary (or any politician really) says ‘I don’t recall‘, what he/she’s really saying is ‘I doubt you can substantiate that without my help, and I’m not going to help. But just in case you can I’ll cover my butt and refuse to help in a way that can’t incriminate me later.‘
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Bonus points this time for the wriggle about ‘joking’ about it. Nobody asked if Hillary was ‘joking’ about it…
Clinton aides trying to figure out ways to pressure Supreme Court:
“Clinton operatives were conspiring in June 2015 on how to best threaten the Supreme Court to rule their way in King v. Burwell, the case that could have effectively ended ObamaCare.
On June 2, 2015, Neera Tanden, the president of the leftist Center for American Progress, emailed Clinton advisor Jake Sullivan her thoughts on how to put the most pressure on the Supreme Court to rule in favor of ObamaCare.
Basically, she wrote, scaring the Court would be the best tactic:
As Jennifer will remember, it was pretty critical that the President threw the gauntlet down last time on the Court, warning them in the first case that it would politicize the role of the Court for them to rule against the ACA. As a close reader of the case, I honestly believe that was vital to scaring Roberts off.
Tanden went on to strategize that the campaign would have to make the Supreme Court aware of “negative political consequences to ruling against the government,†which it could do by planting stories about how Clinton would turn the Supreme Court into an election issue:
Therefore, I think it would be helpful to have a story of how progressives and Hillary would make the Supreme Court an election issue (which would be a ready argument for liberals) if the Court rules against the government. It’s not that you wish that happens. But that would be the necessary consequence of a negative decision…the Court itself would become a hugely important political issue.
“We can get that story started,†Tanden helpfully suggested, but acknowledged it “rests on you guys to make it stick.†In subsequent emails on the thread, Jennifer Palmieri (communications director) approved of the approach, while Brian Fallon (press secretary) offered his help in getting the story out there.” See http://ijr.com/opinion/2016/10/260836-leaked-email-clinton-campaign-plotted-threaten-supreme-court-obamacare-ruling/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
….
The vileness of this plan would be stunning if it came from anyone but Clinton. Further evidence (on top of Obama’s executive orders) that the Left has zero respect for the rule of law.
JD
Mark Bofil
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/8396
This would suggest that Clinton had persona interests that dealt privately with other states while she was secretary of state.
Even if there was no quid pro quo for Qatar (other than meeting with WJC– a private person at this point) and even if the Clinton Foundation “does good work” with the money it gets, having a foundation that benefits from donations from State actors is not wise choice for Secretary of State.
edit: I couldn’t help wondering who “blindsey[e]@clintonfoundation.org” was. Yes. My mind inserted the e. It sounded so…. well.. undercover. It’s Bruce Linsdey. I think I’m going to have to make my new email “blind_eye@nowhere.com”.
Lucia,
:> I love it!
[Edit: Thank you for pointing out the qualifiers. As usual you are spot on. I shouldn’t skip over them like that, weakens my point.]
As I said before, if I were Assange, and assuming Hillary wins, I would ask the Ecuadorian embassy in London for a basement room to sleep in. She wasn’t joking. Heaven help him if he ever leaves the embassy.
Lucia,
“…having a foundation that benefits from donations from State actors is not wise choice for Secretary of State.”
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Obvious to all who are not beholden to the Clintons. The foundation is mainly a political shush fund, where people/foreign governments donate vast sums to gain influence. The Clintons use the funds to travel extravagantly, fund international “events”, advance their chosen policies, and employ their many political hacks/protectors. It absolutely stinks. And they are going to get away with it.
Lucia: With all the negative things coming out about Clinton in wikileaks — her advocacy of murder, her contempt for the agents who protected her, her campaign chairman’s comparison of her to Neville Chamberlain, her support for open borders, and the various Clinton Foundation issues, do you feel that any of this having any impact on the women who are repulsed by Trump’s groping?
JD
SteveF,
Is ‘shush’ fund a typo or a Freudian slip? Either way, it’s a good play on the normal of slush fund.
DeWitt,
Ya, it was supposed slush, but ‘shush’ is also apropos. A lot of people have thrown themselves under the bus for the Clintons. Don’t understand it, and never will.
JD Ohio,
HRC’s contempt for the little people around her goes back at least to when she was First Lady. I have it on fairly good authority that the White House staff loathed her because of it.
Dewitt: ” I have it on fairly good authority that the White House staff loathed her because of it.”
….
I know a Secret Service agent wrote a book that included those kinds of stories. However, there are some questions as to his bias and/or accuracy. The wikileaks revelations are substantially stronger I think.
JD
JD,
A small point that was nagging at the back of my mind: As it turns out, the leak about droning Assange wasn’t from WikiLeaks. Near as I can make out, that one was published by truepundit and references undisclosed State Department sources. Given all the leaks all over the place it’s hard to keep them straight.
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I still buy this one, given HRC’s response. If it’s false, tough. HRC had a chance to say so and didn’t, giving us a classic Clinton evasion instead.
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(As always, if anybody has different information, please do not hesitate to set me straight. I will appreciate it!)
Mark Bofill: ” Near as I can make out, that one was published by truepundit and references undisclosed State Department sources.”
….
I think you are right. Wikileaks retweeted it, which is what is confusing. That makes a difference. I will be more cautious in the future. Until the State Department sources are revealed, I will not be making this point again.
JD
Looking at the DNC propaganda machine’s degree of sophistication in Wiki Leaks, and coordination with Clinton it strikes me that this is what HRC lives for. This is what she is expert in. Trump is a fish out of water and now with his conspiracy ranting tone now appears flapping like a fish that was led down a trap into a net and is now thrashing for life. Or, is that our democracy? I think it could be. Melania is coming out to help but it’s too late I’m afraid. The only person who might be able to save him would be Paul Ryan, who could say the following:
“Many of things that Mr. Trump has articulating that I originally found offensive I now realize were so because he was an unpracticed politician, and that with small modifications I support the actual positions. I also realize now that Mr. Trump appeal to a large number of Americans is exactly that he is not a politician. And, what I have witnessed recently revealed to use through Wiki Leaks makes me wonder why I ever question the judgment of that large group of Americans many in the press have labeled uneducated. I see now they were educated enough to understand that our democracy is in danger — not by a politically unpolished businessman, but by the growth of a political class who’s primary expertise is in the manipulation of the electorate rather than service of the good of the country and the world.â€
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Remember the above is just a dream.
DeWitt, I think women would be more influenced by the WikiLeaks detail that she stole furniture from the State Department.
Ron Graf,
Trump says offensive things because he has offensive attitudes towards lots of people. Perhaps if he were a seasonsed politician he would have learned to hide those things. Instead, he went through the hole “fake-a-lity tv” thing where being offensive got ratings. So he airs every offensive thing he thinks. But really, he’s not offensive mrely because he is not an unpracticed politicians. Lots of people are not practiced politicians, and they don’t say the things he says. The man is coarse.
This is not to say he is fundamentally worse than Hillary. But trying to suggest the Ryan would say what you dream him saying– Ryan isn’t going to say something so ridiculous and laughably untrue.
Lucia,
“The man is coarse.”
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As good a description as I have heard. I would only add “, and undisciplined.”
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Wow, you get up early.
I usually don’t get up this early. But this morning, I couldn’t sleep!! So instead of tossing around, I just got up.
I’ve been looking at Electoral Map paths and polls. Pre-scandal Trump might have had a fighting shot, but I don’t see a realistic path for Oink Oink Trump. Too bad. Still isn’t over till it’s over, but without something dramatically altering the course, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be close.
Well, ‘people deserve the government they get, and they deserve to get it good and hard.’ 🙂 Never more true than today.
I certainly hope Trump has prepared for the debate tomorrow! He’ll have as close to a friendly moderator as it gets. Last big chance to sway any undecided voters.
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Lucia,
Would you open a thread for the debate tomorrow? [I mean, whenever. I mean, I should have said ‘Lucia, Tomorrow will you open a thread for the debate?’. There.]
Lucia, I agree Trump is coarse and is probably my 16th pick out of 17 GOP candidates. I can only figure he was popular due to the coarseness of his message that PC politicians can get the job done of securing the boarder and enforcing immigration laws. The other issues, fair trade or conduct effective foreign policy and fiscal responsibility were common messages. There was also the wimp factor associated with a lot of GOP candidates. Their PC and mild manners were perceived as weakness among frustrated blue collars. I think any GOP candidate would have been “revealed” by the media with October surprises.
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Okeef, the undercover journalist who broke the Planned Parenthood fetal organ parts peddling, has undercover tape of DNC contractors explaining how to infiltrate Trump rallies and bait his supporters into making a camera worthy news story that can be used to smear Trump supporters. I don’t know if anyone else besides Hannity has or will air the video. Clearly, the propaganda is coordinated. I noticed CNN did mention briefly that the FBI was offered a quid pro quo to declassify HRC subpoenaed emails in order they could maintain her cover story of no classified emails on the server. This is the DoS working on HRC’s behalf to break laws to shield her three years after she’s gone. This would have been blasted as huge corruption if it happened under a Republican.
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I noticed also in CNN’s hard news on the electoral breakdown they qualify Trump’s edge in Ohio as a flyer due to high population of non-college educated whites. Even with the “college†inserted it’s pretty interesting how they label the deplorables. I wonder how it would go over if that label was applied to a non-white group.
Let me qualify what I said before. If every race that’s close breaks for Trump, he’ll get close. One would have to suppose 3-4% of the population is going to vote for Trump and isn’t admitting it, but even then he just gets close. I can see him getting a maximum of 264 points if we imagine this is the case.
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But this uses highly favorable assumptions for Trump, and he still doesn’t quite make it. He’d need to flip Wisconsin or something to break 270, and he basically would have to win everywhere it’s possible for him to win.
Mark
But please, please god, let this be over!!
Lucia,
🙂 Soon this stage of our suffering will end. Heh. And a new stage of suffering will begin…
Ron,
Regarding O’Keefe: Is Hannity airing it? I read rumors that Fox News had backed down.
Ron,
Yeah, this is what made me think they weren’t going with it.
So: The third presidential debate of the election season is set for Wednesday (Oct. 19) starting at 9 p.m. ET (8 p.m. CT)
By the way, the Cubs play the Dodgers tomorrow at 7 pm. I’m guessing that will cut into the Chi’town and LA audience for the debates.
mark bofill,
I think you are overly pessimistic. 538 gives Trump a 17% chance of winning as things stand now. Not great, but hardly hopeless. And stuff can still happen; the race has been very up and down. Plus there are all the 3rd party voters, many of whom change their minds at the last minute. Then there is the fact that the L.A. Times poll has Trump doing much better than other polls. Last time, that poll (then called the Rand poll) was the only national poll that got the results right (all the others had the race closer than it was). Maybe last time was a fluke and they will look like fools this time, or maybe they will be right again.
I am not claiming that Trump will win, only that you should not put too much faith in polls. After all, the polls in the U.K. had Brexit losing.
Mike M.,
Yes. I cultivate a pessimistic viewpoint deliberately. The glib phrasing of the idea has it that all of my surprises will be pleasant ones, but [edit: this aside] IMO there is an underlying core of value in doing so.
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It’s easy to believe in things we want to believe; nobody is easier to fool than oneself. Heck, it doesn’t really matter if I have an opinion on the upcoming election and it’s wrong; I’m not putting any money on it. It’s more of a life habit / work habit thing.
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Thanks though, I had not seen the 538 stuff. I’ll go look. One in six is a lot better odds than I was estimating, frankly.
Lucia,
“By the way, the Cubs play the Dodgers tomorrow at 7 pm. I’m guessing that will cut into the Chi’town and LA audience for the debates.”
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Neither state is ‘in play’, so it may not matter much. Of course, the demographic that likes baseball games may not overlap a lot with the one that likes Presidential debates. I, for one, would prefer the ball game. 😉
RonGraf, I find most politicians offensive because being a politician and getting elected requires some lack of principles and continuously spinning the truth about things.
Trump in my book does not come across as an outsider with regards to these weaknesses that I see in general in politicians, and, in fact, takes those weaknesses a few bridges further. He is a caricature of a politician in that he is so blunt and gross that he makes these weaknesses very apparent whereas some of the smoother talking and appearing politicians, like an Obama, are also spinning the truth and are as unprincipled. I think his supporters are confused about him acting as an outsider and being desperate for making statement about their displeasure with the current political class – and as I am myself – they have chosen a very flawed spokesperson with not only all the weaknesses of the political class but with the additional baggage of some very bad behavior thrown in.
Actually my surprise is more with Trumps’ supporters than with him, himself. I knew he was a phony and boorish before he made this run.
Kenneth,
I agree with you, Trump isn’t an outsider in those ways. I’m hoping he’s an outsider in other ways. For example,
There is WikiLeaked Podesta email evidence to support an argument that HRC donor’s are trying to influence her pick for SCOTUS / Scalia’s replacement:
I don’t know why the Open Society Foundations wants Wallace, who actually doesn’t appear at a glance to be a bad candidate. Not even really sure this means Christopher Stone wants Wallace. I don’t really care. I don’t want the Open Society Foundations influencing the choice. Or any donor or lobbyist if I can help it, although I grant that this may be naive.
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I don’t know that Trump would be an ‘outsider’ in this sense. I’m hoping he might be. But I’m pretty sure Hillary is an ‘insider’, considering the email.
~shrug~
I guess more generally, Trump doesn’t appear to have a huge political machine like HRC does at his disposal [edit: to cater to]. I’m sure there’s a GOP machine, but the GOP haven’t been in charge of the executive branch for the past eight (8) years. Maybe it’s the lesser evil. Well… Maybe it’s the smaller evil machine at the moment. [Edit: and possibly Trump isn’t an important figure in such a machine. Although that would change if he got elected I imagine.]
Ken, I think we are all in relative agreement that Trump is an alpha male of the old school jerk variety. But I’m afraid unless you want a career politician, and we’ve had plenty of these, you are going to get someone who wants the job because they are upset with career politicians. Ben Carson was an outsider and a mild mannered gentleman, but as soon as he started gaining steam in the primary the press questioned his biographical story, basically calling him a liar for the effect of diminishing his credibility. Mitt Romney was liked by dems and independents until after the GOP convention. He then had his image savaged. One of the biggest ironies is that he was slammed on 9-12-12 for calling the Benghazi attack and attack before the intelligence was all in. Then Obama that same day condemns terrorism (in case it was) and this general statement is cited by Candy Crowley in the 2nd debate proving Obama called Benghazi correctly a terrorist attack.
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Hillary is even more about propaganda spin than Obama. The House investigation showed that HRC was calculating the Youtube video spin angle before the attack was over but after she had already called Chelsea to tell her about the “attack.”
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Mark, I saw clips of O’Keefe’s video on Hannity last night. There were specific instructions of how, what, where and when to instigate violence at Trump rallies so as to be filmed by the media. They also explained their complicated chart of connection with the DNC and how deniability was to be maintained.
Mark, did you mean 265 EV?
Seems Trump’s path is straightforward. Starting at 191, you have NC to get to 206,
OH for 224, FL for 253, Iowa for 259, Nevada for 265. Then New Hampshire, plus a district in Maine is 270. Other than New Hampshire, you would then have to go to Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Colorado.
There is also a Hillary elector in Washington who says he will vote for Sanders, but I don’t see a 268 vote path where this matters.
Ron,
Thanks.
Thanks MikeN. I didn’t keep a record, so it’s not unlikely I made a mistake. [Edit: I might have overlooked New England, just ’cause. 🙂 I remember concluding that he’d need a Wisconsin, or Penn, or Colorado, or Oregon (god have mercy).]
Ron,
I’ve tried to get through OKeefe’s videos online. I have to confess I haven’t been able to force myself to sit through the whole deal.
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The trouble is context. Lots of stuff gets mentioned that sounds really really bad. Questions occur to me like: Why are these guys talking about this so freely? What got edited out? It looks like Project Veritas doing a hatchet job, if you want my honest opinion.
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It might not be. But. ~shrug~
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I think that those methods of voter fraud are out of date, personally. I guess it happens to some extent, but why conduct voter fraud with live humans when you can just mess with the tally on the automated voting machines, is my view.
Only one of the candidates appears to be rational right now, at least from the coverage we’re getting over here. Which makes it astounding that Trump hasn’t thrown it in. (I seem to remember he ridiculed Romney’s performance in his run – no doubt Trump would never regrow his ego if he does worse, so maybe he’s digging in. I don’t think he believes he can win.)
Trump, it seems, ate all the other fish in the barrel with him but then didn’t perform well at the next more subtle task.
He’s no politician, but I have a theory about why politicians are politicians. It’s a sort of natural selection idea. If you enact a policy, you alienate half the voters. Enact a second policy, you alienate half again (a different subset). A quarter of the electorate now hate you. Half dislike you. A quarter love you to bits.
Politicians have a way – disgusting, true – of not answering questions, of never saying yes or no, etc, etc, of being bland – because then no-one develops the deep hatred that would eliminate them. Non-politicians alienate people faster than they attract them.
Final point – I think I could beat Trump at poker. (I can’t afford to play him at poker. But if we played for buttons, I think I’d have a shot.) I don’t know about Hillary. That has to be an asset when dealing with other world leaders.
Wow, I’m sounding like a Hillary cheerleader. I ain’t. I only wish you guys had a better choice.
Jit,
We’ll muddle through with Hillary like we always do. We’ll have the finest elected officials money can buy! I’m sure it’s not the first time it’s happened. I just hope a reasonable percentage of the buyers happen to be U.S. corporations and lobbyists instead of foreign interests. :/
one Trump bumper sticker on Birmingham to Tallahassee leg, no HRC’s but then there were only a few local posters so I figured the interstate isn’t prime political poster territory. we saw one large Trump sign in Birmingham.
Bumper sticker – seen in Tallahassee: ‘Mein Trumpf’
I think someone really missed a bet not flooding the place with Les Deplorable stickers modeled on Le Miserable.
Mark, the videos I saw only had to do with creating a negative image of Trump supporters as uneducated. No voter fraud scheme videos yet.
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Jit, I agree that Trump is losing his temper and speaking irrationally. There is no reason to claim voter fraud with no no major story about it. There is other corruption being exposed for his benefit that he is not taking the time to absorb and verbalize. He needs to calm down and practice composure while laying down a case.
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I still believe Hillary has not closed the deal with over 50% and could be beat. It’s just a matter if Trump can pull himself together.
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The US president does not need to me great poker player since he/she will usually have the strongest hand at the table. The key is not being underestimated as one to fold at every bluff to deter that tactic.
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I like that. 🙂
Ron Graf wrote: “There is no reason to claim voter fraud …”
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If Trump is claiming voter fraud, I haven’t heard of it. He is claiming that the system is rigged, referring to the way the press is colluding with Clinton and the way we usually only get candidates that the establishment approves of only discussing approved issues. The establishment controls the electoral apparatus (as Bernie found out) and are furious that a non-approved candidate got a major party nomination.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/18/politics/reality-check-voter-fraud-donald-trump/
Ron Graf, O’Keefe released another set of videos, with the same guy talking about taking voters to Wisconsin. Said that a bus would make it easy for prosecution, so he tended to use cars bought at auction.
Ron Graf,
Thanks for the link. I had not seen that and it is a different story from the one I had seen. But Trump is hardly being irrational. He is calling attention to studies that support the Republican position that the voter registration system lacks integrity.
Well, Hillary’s people appear to believe massive voter fraud happens. Maybe they know something about it we don’t, or maybe they’re mistaken too.
Sort of surprises me. And again, if one questions the legitimacy of the WikiLeaked material in the first place, I have no evidence to refute with except WikiLeak’s long term reputation. ~shrug~
Mark, regarding reputability of info, I am not aware of any WikiLeaks past misfires, are you?
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On voter ID, anyone who wants ID requirements wants Jim Crow laws and therefore is a racist, according to the dems and legacy media.
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MikeN, I commented too soon. Trump must have heard of the video coming before it got out on Fox, of course. The legacy media may cover it post-election as an afterthought like they did Benghazi last time.
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Mike M, I’m not saying Trump is irrational as much as he must realize his opponents primary objective is to make him sound that way, and he should be careful in not helping.
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I think the Patrick Kennedy QPQ may have legs. I hope Trump studies it for tomorrow because that’s from congress, not Wiki Leaks.
Ron Graf: “Trump must realize his opponents primary objective is to make him sound that way [irrational], and he should be careful in not helping.”
I am sure he realizes that. And I am sure he realizes that the MSM is so far in the tank for Clinton that it does not matter if he helps. The question is: How can he counter that? I don’t know, but the evidence is that Trump is way better at that sort of thing than you or I.
Ron,
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I’m not aware of WikiLeaks having faked anything before, nope. Personally, I think they are genuine and unaltered.
jit,
I agree that most politicians who successfully run for President in the States act to hide what they actually want to do from the voters. Some might call that deception. There are of course politicians elected in very ‘safe’ districts who are more honest with their constituents, because their personal views and their voter’s views are similar. But those folks are generally loathed by people outside their ‘safe’ districts (Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi come to mind). It seems to me that the existence of so many ‘safe’ districts leads to successful presidential candidates mostly being liars and obfuscaters (and the perfect example is Hillary, of course). Any politician who plays it straight with the voters about unpleasant fiscal realities, the need for substantive policy compromise, and how naive expectations need to change is not likely to become President. We get the liars we appear to deserve.
Definitely. As SteveF says, Pelosi is a example on the Democrat side. Jeff Sessions from my state is a great example on the conservative side – he ran unopposed last election. He didn’t feel the need to distance himself from Trump when the scandals hit, not because he’s got unusual courage or integrity, but because he’s basically not at risk with his constituency, IMO. Well, that and the fact that Alabama is still pretty solid for Trump anyway.
I highly recommend this drinking game for the last debate. But caution is advised. Over consumption is a distinct possibility.
https://pics.onsizzle.com/presidential-debate-drinking-game-drink-every-time-trump-drink-every-4079789.png
Yesterday, I forgot that I’ll be at Salsa night during this debate. So I’ll open a thread but I won’t be there in comments.
You guys will have to post a comment when Thor sends down a lightening bolt to take out the candidates, stage or moderator.
I hope to be watching it and commenting. We’ll see what the internet connection is like at my kid’s hockey practice though. Also recording it, might have to watch it later.
Lucia,
I’m watching the ball game. Watching the debate would open up the issue of uncontrolled nausea.
“…when Thor sends down a lightening bolt to take out the candidates…”
If only!!
I will have to disagree with SteveF on this
At some point a politician has to attempt to sell the legislation they back to the general voting public and that will most often involve straight out lying or spinning the facts. Even to the voters in their own safe districts they would never say that the cost of what they are proposing will have to paid for by the voters children and grandchildren. They would never admit to disregarding the national debts and deficits nor that they are motivated by in effect buying the votes of their constituents and letting others pay for it.
Ignoring the consequences of their actions for short term political gains is every bit as deceitful as an outright lie and probably more so.
I have been pondering the Bernie Sanders phenomena since he was given equal billing (equally as false in my view) as an outsider with Trump. Like Trump I find the outsider label very far from the truth of the matter with Sanders. We do not hear much about how he is back in lock step with the Democrats and the establishment heroine Hillary. He does not even react to some of the negative stuff coming out of the emails that was said about him by other Democrats. How pathetic is that and what effect does it have on the so-called idealistic young voters who were given a lot of media attention for backing Sanders and being anti-establishment? I think the effect has been minimal as witnessed by the lack of support by these young voters for the Green Party candidate who surely is closer to what Sanders was selling than that from Hillary.
It is unfortunate in my view that in general the younger people are turning in unquestioning terms towards big government. Will they “grow” out of this tendency? Some probably will, but with a tendency of more government dependency I think there is a positive feedback – until something seriously breaks to stop the cycle.
“Today I am proposing a bill to make all college education free to those who can’t afford it. Actually, we will require you to log into a web site that is impossible to navigate but require you to submit simple information. Just get copies of your last five tax returns and bank accounts, brokerage accounts, real estate holdings and any tangible or intangible property. Then in six months after you enroll in college we should be back to you to let you know how much we would reimburse for tuition. We only cover a portion of the room and it depends on how far the college is and the CPI index for both your locality and the colleges to calculate that amount. We will do that for you also in six months after you submit proof of enrollment. Also, you must send us proof of GPA in higher than 2.0 and continued billing receipts. If you fail to attend without notification to the university or drop during the semester this will void your entitlement. Any violation and false statements would result in — well don’t even try us…we know where you live.
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Your children and grandchildren will be proud of you and will not have to pay anything back because everyone will be a worker for the state and party. Everyone will be filled with bliss. I count on your support.”
Ron Graf,
You forgot to mention that if you like your college, you can keep your college, except that every year you might be required to transfer to a new college.
Kenneth Fritsch:
I get what you’re saying about Sanders… but is it accurate to describe Trump as an outsider? I kind of view him as one of the privileged elite for whom rigged system has been rigged for.
I’d say real estate moguls that pay little in taxes definitely are “insiders”.