A quick look at Memeorandum this morning shows that they have an all-you-can-eat buffet of articles about Hillary Clinton’s private server and emails. For me personally, these articles are not compelling. This is not an appetizing buffet. Like Bernie Sanders, I don’t give a damn about her damn emails.
So, reading them is a chore. It’s not something I would do for pleasure or even curiosity. Professionally, however, I’m obligated to take a look. Wall-to-wall coverage like this has the potential to affect the outcome of the presidential race, potentially giving America a president who is unfit in every way to have the job.
If all of this had to come out, this is the ideal time for it. Right at the beginning of the Labor Day weekend, most people, like me, feel like they have better things to do than get into the details of phishing attacks and gone-missing mobile devices and FBI interviews written in inscrutable FBI-ese.
Yet, the polls have been tightening, in some cases significantly. This avalanche of negative and unflattering press is probably going to accelerate that process, with possible catastrophic consequences for the nation and the world.
This makes it a little harder to focus on my upcoming Fantasy Football draft.
Nothing in these pieces undermines the FBI’s judgment that Clinton was grossly irresponsible in handling classified information but still did nothing warranting prosecution. A fair person would conclude that this information collectively offers a case against her presidency, but that then has to be weighed against the case against Trump’s presidency, which is rock solid and unassailable.
Asking the American public to trust one of these candidates is a piece of effrontery, frankly, and I won’t attempt it.
This really is a decision that comes down to not the personalities and character of the candidates but to the coalitions and values they represent. The Trump coalition has attitudes on science, race and immigration, civil rights, and basic civility that are simply unacceptable, even to a large portion of Republicans.
If you insist on measuring the character and personalities of the candidates, Clinton still comes out as more trustworthy, with better judgment, and certainly with a better grasp of the issues and basic preparedness for the job.
But this election isn’t about them. It’s about us, and what kind of country we want to have.
The final test is one of basic risk-aversion. Clinton passes that test, too. Trump is a loose cannon who alienates our allies in every area of the world. He probably has a clinical narcissistic personality disorder and I would never trust him with nuclear weapons.
In the end, Clinton made a series of poor decisions and wasn’t forthcoming about them. That’s not what you want to see when you’re thinking about giving someone the top job in the country. The country has deserved better choices from the beginning of this election season, and we’ve never had them on offer. Each of the alternatives brought their own significant flaws, even if they were different in type.
In any case, Clinton and Trump won their nominations and now we choose.
It’s a dispiriting choice but not a hard one.
The idea of just nuking it by voting for Trump is understandable.
If you have another choice which most states will, consider your protest for the Libertarians or Greens rather than Trump. Consider it, that’s all I’m saying. I’d go with Trump but Pence sealed his fate. I will not vote for anyone who thinks a woman’s menstrual cycle should be a matter of state record and scrutiny.
Pence would be horrible, but he probably wouldn’t destroy basic peace and order in our country. Trump would.
Hillary will.
Nonetheless, Pence would make people long for the days of W.
Domestically, yeah. At least George lived in the 20th century.
This really pisses me off.
Because this is the election you blow the other side away in. This is the election you take the House and the Senate and you put in a knife to the other side that leaves them at war with themselves.
Donald Trump is the political gift of a lifetime.
We are missing a once in a lifetime opportunity because our candidate is so disliked and untrustworthy.
After all of this I STILL think we win by more than 10.
But the Senate will be close (Bayh may be the difference) and we will lose it back in ’18 and I doubt we take the House.
And that is on the top of the ticket.
I any generic year the dems would lose the WH. Any victory is due to the GOP going off the rails. So looked at that way, really by all rights it shouldnt he that kind of election.
WHO takes the House and Senate? The corporate Dems take the House and Senate. There is no “we”. Only the owning class and their minions.
Give us a bigger margin in the Senate than Bayh. He’s this year’s Lieberman unless he has a secret plan to blow the private insurance industry off the planet. You know the chances of that.
Should have clarified. I meant it’s understandable, not that anyone should do it, nor that I would. If there’s any chance Trump might win in Wisconsin, I’ll vote for Clinton. Otherwise, like you say, maybe someone else.
You really want to take that chance? Dewey was ahead in every poll. He lost.
I’d really rather you not gamble with my future by throwing your vote away.
It’s his vote not yours. That’s the whole trouble with the Democratic party. They think they own the voters, not that they serve the voters.
Especially if you’re confident that you won’t be part of the collateral damage.
The civilians who will be blown up when Hillary launches her war of regime change against Syria also count as collateral damage.
They do, and so do people I know personally who will be deported when Trump launches his “special deportation force”. Their kids who are citizens and won’t be deported but will end up in god-knows-what broken social service agency count too.
My point is that you can’t settle this on competing moral claims or appeals to personal conscience because that will lead you right down a rabbit-hole.
I wonder if the politically active have any idea what most people think of this election.
Just how bad this looks. And its getting worse. Clinton looks worse and worse.
I have had people ask me how I could clap for Clinton at the Convention. Not that they are going to vote for Trump they aren’t.
They imply I am unclean. I don’t have much of an answer.
I learned this in the 90’s: I don’t defend the Clintons where they don’t deserve it.
She has good ads right now on the economy – very reminiscent of the things you like about the Clintons.
But it really is an awful choice.
Haven’t seen any ads for any candidate for any office, except Mark Kirk slinging mud at Tammy Duckworth for being “anti-veteran” (pausing so you can stop laughing).
Maybe neither Party wants to waste money in Illinois.
Strickland in Ohio is looking iffy. Guess it might depend on top of ticket turnout.
Oh please. Really?
Must I rehash the litany of close to 30 years of false allegations and smears against the Clintons? And please don’t tell me “They brought it on themselves.” They didn’t, not by a country mile.
Frankly, I’m sick of everyone saying how untrustworthy Hillary is, and how she creates her own problems. She really doesn’t. Anyone go after Powell for deleting all his emails and never turning them over? No. How about his foundation, which his wife ran during his tenure at the State Department? Anyone ask to see those books? Demand Powell shut it down while he was in government? How about George H.W. Bush’s Points of Light Foundation, which ran while he was president?
This is beyond reason now. If she were a Republican, everyone’d want to elect her by acclimation. But I guess people just loves them some Kool Aid.
You are in denial.
This was entirely self-inflicted.
She has been caught in outright lies about it.
NONE of this was necessary.
You are in denial.
This was entirely self-inflicted.
She has been caught in outright lies about it.
NONE of this was necessary.
If you’re a fucking moron, yeah.
No lack of morons in this country right now…
Very true. And it shows how thin the veneer of civilization is. Would be so easy to regress to a culture of bigotry where minorities live in terror. Scary! Particularly scary that we may be headed that way.
Part of this reminds me of the wall that attorneys ran into with the Cheney admin when trying to defend against FISA court warrants. They could defend clients adequately because the information gleaned from the warrants was protected from being used. The content of the emails marked with the ‘c’ that I saw were simply mundane; like the heads up the UN head was retiring. And he did. Redactions create this aura of sinister as if she was emailing the nuclear codes.
So the unknown works against her. She knows the emails are talking about what kind of Vodka Putin likes, but Drudge says they’re about the nuclear codes.
She discussed targets for drone strikes.
There is no way that wasn’t confidential.
So she hides behind “I don’t remember”.
I don’t actually see much difference on trust worthiness.
She broke the law – and I think everyone knows it. The FBI got trapped – and this was their way out. My hope is they sat around a conference table and said it would take 3 years to prosecute this – so disclose it all and let the people decide.
This is the 1991 Louisiana election for Governor.
Vote for the crook.
It’s important.
But profoundly fucked up.
A lot of people on our side are going to say it isn’t.
But it is.
What I have said, and others as well, from the beginning, is that this whole email clustertotalfuckup is that it is an unforced, forseeable, boneheaded, moronically stupid, and close-to-unforgiveable stupidity. She knew, in 2009, she was running after Barack. She KNEW. So, WHY DID SHE DO THIS?
It’s absolutely predictable what has come out. And IT’S NOT ALL OUT YET. Assange is sitting on more damning crap, which will come out Oct 22.
If she loses, she will know, for the rest of her life, that her own STUPID CHOICES finished her off. One after another, email server, Clinton Foundation, on and on and on, DUMB DUMB choices.
Do we want a person in the POTUS who cannot see beyond the end of her nose?
Hubris. Colossal planetary scale Hubris. Even more than that fat boy over in North Korea.
That’s like asking why Trump constantly sends insecure bullying tweets despite his camp begging him not to.
It’s simply a fundamental part of their character. A Hillary Clinton who didn’t exploit every weaselly shortcut available to her would not be “Hillary Clinton”.
Assange is sitting on DNC emails. Not HRC emails, at least not that he’s saying. And the DNC emails were laughably pedestrian. (Remember, HRC’s server wasn’t hacked. The State Department’s server, which is where everyone is saying HRC should have stored her emails, was, twice. But never let the facts get in the way of a good smear, right?)
But it seems Trump bribing the Florida AG to save Trump U. an investigation is of no moment. Nothing to see here, move along.
. . . er . . . “loose” with the facts, coming from someone calling himself “dataguy”.
Funny, as I read the report, my feeling was it actually helped her quite a bit, aside from the breathless and terrible press coverage. The “optics” suck, but the press has never liked the Clintons so there was bound to be something for them to pull a Whitewater on.
Whitewater was bullshit.
This is not.
Benghazi (the aspect that the House is obsessed with) is bullshit. Whitewater, proper, was chump change. McDougal and Madison Guaranty was serious money (albeit less than what Neil Bush and his buddies at Silverado squandered). The Clintons were unlikely to have been privy to McDougal’s “accounting irregularities” beginning in 1980 with the purchase of Bank of Kingston, but they didn’t seem to mind McDougal covering the 1978 partnership loan on the Whitewater property for a number of years and doubt that she much awareness of the interference those at the Rose Law firm ran for McDougal.
What is not bullshit is:
I place #1 in the quasi-BS category. Yes, he lied to the public about a personal sexual liaison, but that relationship was of no public interest. I admit that I don’t have any respect for philanderers and their cover-up lies, but the task for a voter is to determine if such cheating is compartmentalized and then won’t interfere with job performance or is a more generalized way of being and therefore renders the person unacceptable for high office. It was only long after ’92 and ’96 that the answer to that question became clearer and the evidence for it had nothing to with his Lewinsky dalliance. Unfortunately, Clinton fans remain as blind to that evidence as those that loathe Clinton continue to obsesses over his sexual behavior.
Yeah, well no. The Clintons lost money on Whitewater, and distanced themselves from McDougal long before any of his shenanigans happened. Read the trial where he was found guilty. Read what the jurors said. Read the frickin’ facts. Almost every bit of Whitewater coverage was factually false. McDougal defrauded the Clintons, which he admitted on the stand, and which the government argued at McDougal’s trial.
Oh, you mean the emails that didn’t use the words “drone,” “drone,” and “CIA”? Those ones? The ones every major newspaper knew about and wrote about? The ones that were retroactively classified?
Meanwhile, Trump bribes a state attorney general to avoid a fraud lawsuit, and no one gives a shit.
Yeah. Makes sense. Not to me, but it makes sense.
I try to avoid the HRC fights on this website but you’re in so far over your skis here.
What law did she break that lead you to deem her a crook? Do you agree with the decision by the FBI to close the investigation without a referral for indictment?
You say she is hiding behind “I don’t remember”. How often do you think people under deposition say “I don’t recall” or “I don’t remember” when it comes to events (details from briefings in this case) from years earlier. I’m thinking it happens fairly often and it is not necessarily obfuscation.
You accused her of obstructing justice. What is the context for your claim? The FBI found that it was the vendor who managed the email server that deleted emails.
This dump provided another opportunity for the media to shit all over Clinton (yes, the email server was a disastrous own goal) and another opportunity for folks who are opposed to Clinton to concern troll and wring their hands over the missed opportunity to pick someone else and proceed to dominate the election. This is a shallow exercise, all around.
I did a quick search for people who both read the FBI release from Friday and bothered to do a write-up of their analysis.
14 Excerpts From the FBI’s Report on Hillary Clinton’s Email
Follow-up
Do you have supporting evidence for your claims from the FBI release?
Read it here.
I was a Prosecutor dude.
When someone says “I don’t remember” in a case like this I get suspicious as hell.
She made very specific statements in public that were NOT true. Those are not under outh – but they go to her credibility.
I believe there are grounds to believe she lied in the interview. The last 4 pages of the document in which she is questioned by the FBI are damaging.
I can tell you I have never heard in over 25 years of practicing law of a case where the main principal is interviewed and 48 hours later the decision is made not to prosecute.
Should an indictment been sought? I can see the argument against it.
But she did this to her self.
And apparently the lies she told the public – and there is no doubt that she has lied to the public over this – don’t bother you.
Since you are a prosecutor, and presumably experienced in dealing with evidence, could you please point me to the place in the FBI report where it states that Clinton discussed the targets for drone strikes in unclassified email? You’ve stated twice that she did this.
It seems to me that if she did, this is indeed problematic, but I didn’t see it in the report.
I recognize your appeal to authority as a prosecutor although I will not defer to it. I myself have had a TS-SCI clearance but I would not consider myself an expert on classification.
I share your disgust at the fact that she “did this to her self”.
However, your suspicions with regards to her saying “I don’t remember” when it comes to briefings from years earlier don’t mean much to me.
I can’t speak as to how and why the FBI made its decision not to prosecute. I wish that the interview had occurred much earlier, prior to the ending of the primary. It’s a strange case, no doubt, and poorly handled.
You have not convinced me as to the lies to the public. Comey has admitted that only 3 email chains out of thousands were considered to have contained classified material. All three lacked the proper headers required to indicate the classification level.
Is it possible, in your mind, that HRC may have been under the assumption that none of her emails would have been considered classified and therefore her statements were truthful?
Are there other lies that concern you? I’m not keeping track of the lies that politicians tell.
I fully accept the possibility that she was lying as I’m trying to remain objective. She was not, and is not, my preferred candidate.
In my mind, HRC operated under the assumption that none of her emails would be seen by anyone outside her circle except for those that she put in a book because they made her look good.
Other’s don’t give a damn about HRC’s emails, and I’ve consistently not given a damn about those that contained classified information — not that I don’t recognize that such transfers were in violation of her legal obligations — but for me that’s a subset of her violations in not using State Dept systems for her work email communications.
That’s not merely a protocol for government records subject to FOIA requests but SOP in the private sector.
It’s possible but I don’t really buy that she was under the assumption that her emails would not be subject to FOIA.
If her goal was to avoid having to turn them over she should have had the archive deleted instead of hiring a firm to manage the server. That would have been a crime.
And, of course, there’s the matter of the archives belonging to certain recipients of her emails also being subject to FOIA.
I’m not sure whether the State Dept’s directive as to not using personal email for work communications was anything more than guidance in the form of recommendation. It certainly is the SOP in both the private and public sector but I believe there’s some precedent when it comes to the practices of previous Secretaries of State. I’ll have to look into that to determine what exactly she may have violated.
getting right to the core of the issue here:
The definition of “lie” includes knowledge that what’s asserted is false. You’d think a self-declared former prosecutor would know that. Yet fladem has been throwing that accusation around quite freely and repeatedly, also without supporting evidence (which also looks odd coming from a self-declared former prosecutor; you’d think s/he’d be all over the evidence part).
The email-based argument against Clinton is more damning than “she was irresponsible” and “she made poor decisions”.
She calculatingly placed her own interests ahead of the people she was supposed to be serving. (Interests that fail any common sense appreciation of institutional ethics, whether or not they are prosecutable.) And when exposed, she lied repeatedly and shamelessly.
It all provides further evidence, though it was hardly needed, that her administration will be a grim Nixonian slog of secrecy, paranoia, and corruption. Not that this alters the Better Than Trump argument as you’ve laid it out. But what a depressingly low bar.
Unless you have reason to think that Clinton will use the organs of the state to commit espionage against her political opponents, I don’t see where you come up with the prediction that a Clinton administration would be a “grim, Nixonian slog.”
You must be reading emails no one else knows about. Because otherwise, I’d have to conclude you’re deluded.
This sounds snarky, but so far I’m falling on the Kevin Drum end of the spectrum. Self-inflicted? Yes. Stupid? Yes. Exactly the kind of ‘offense’ that every person in power commits? Yes. Should Clinton have known that when she commits the same offense, she’s held to a different standard? Of-fucking-course.
But in terms of the actual content of what she did? I’m struggling to see why it’s not chump change.
You’ve answered your own question. It’s not really about the content. it’s about her character, which has been manifested many times before and is not going to change.
Curious? Has everyone here just internalized the worst of the NYTimes/Politico reporting?
So offer your defense.
She used a private email server to discuss targets for drone strikes.
Tell me how that is not confidential information.
Tell me how she did not know that this was confidential?
I get that some Clinton people will just say “Right wing conspiracy” to everything they do.
So tell me your defense, if you have one.
She was SOS and allowed to do that. You should read the report. If you don’t want to, rather than argue about it, I think Kevin Drum has the best actual rundown of it:
http://m.motherjones.com/m/kevin-drum
As he notes, and as I felt after reading it, it basically exonerates her.
You are factually wrong.
She initially said there was no confidential information on her private email server.
That was a lie.
Comey said this:
“There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position or in the position of those with whom she was corresponding about the matters should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation,”
The Secretary of State cannot do anything she wants with confidential information.
I suspect there is nothing she could do that would not “exonerate” her.
Read the report, or at least Drum’s breakdown that I linked to. I no longer think Comey was being an honest actor in his initial presser, but that’s my opinion. And, to make you feel better, I was ready for ugly stuff in the FBI report. There is some granular details stuff–that’s where we are on this scandal right–but she comes out pretty good in my assessment.
LOL…..
Clinton defenders will believe anything.
It’s obvious you are not interested in reading the report. Oh well.
I read the whole thing, all 2,436 words of it, and I didn’t need Drum to tell me that the entire story is “small beer.” I knew that. Sanders told me so in the first debate. He was right. We all knew that. But the main impression you get reading it is that something Hillary Clinton did needs a 2,436 word defense rather than focusing attention on her plans for improving the lives of Americans as president. Such a waste.
Read the report.
Also, have years of experience as a Prosecutor.
And I can tell you it is you that don’t care about the facts.
Well, let’s just say that they insist on a vastly higher standard of guilt for politicians named Clinton than those with lesser names.
They do. What’s so funny is that the report makes clear that Clinton broke no law by conducting official business on a personal account. That’s why Powell (and predecessors) isn’t sitting jail right now, even though he clearly appears to have done his best to work around records retention laws during his tenure. The report suggests just the opposite with respect to Clinton, who had no role in sorting out personal from work related email when giving records to State.
Oh, and I might add, it looks as if Clinton was cautious with classified/confidential information. Though not completely clear, it appears no emails containing retroactively classified information came from her that were on her private server. Moreover, it appears the staff that originated the messages were careful to redact information, or outright felt it wasn’t classified to begin with.
“She was SOS and allowed to do that.”
And this is laughably wrong.
I’ve got to read a 2,500 work article by Kevin Drum to learn that bad stuff the NYTimes reports about Clinton is untrue?
You see the problem, right?
Drum stops at 27.
The interview starts later.
The real question has always been the same: is she guilty of obstruction of justice.
The problem is that a court has to prove guilt. At the moment she is having to prove innocence.
Where is the evidence of obstruction of justice as the law defines it?
Enough to persuade a jury if she were John Wayne and not Hillary Clinton?
A jury trial involving such a case would be a horror show. The journalists that have covered this story for the mainstream press are largely ignorant of the nature of classification and the technical details involved.
That crowd, with every incentive and ability to become proficient with the subject matter, proved to be a failure in reporting this story effectively. I have even less faith in the ability of a typical jury to deliberate on the particulars here.
Wow. What a CHUMPY LITTLE CRAP ANSWER.
She is NOT dictator of the State Department. She didn’t follow the FUCKING RULES. SO DO NOT COME UP WITH THAT WEASEL SHIT ABOUT WHAT SHE “HAD TO DO”!!!
Infuriatingly stupid response. Just infuriating.
“She used a private email server to discuss targets for drone strikes.”
OTOH “The vaguely worded messages didn’t mention the “CIA,” “drones” or details about the militant targets”
Also: “It happened when decisions about imminent strikes had to be relayed fast and the U.S. diplomats in Pakistan or Washington didn’t have ready access to a more-secure system, either because it was night or they were traveling.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/clinton-emails-in-probe-dealt-with-planned-drone-strikes-1465509863
Still– she’s a witch!
“The vaguely worded messages didn’t mention the “CIA,” “drones” or details about the militant targets”
Oh. that makes it ok then.
But then you shift arguments.
The question is whether she knew that this was confidential information. Because using the private e-mail server for that contradicts her previous statements, and is illegal.
The other day I trolled the Breitbart comment section (it was a slow day at work) by rubbing their noses in Trump getting caught out in his lie about the discussion with Nieto. One of the faithful replied, literally, “So?” I replied, “So he lied to your face. Again.” They replied, literally, “I don’t care.”
I have not yet seen from a Clinton apologist an equal degree of honesty. They will move the goalposts into the next ZIP code before plainly acknowledging that Clinton’s bone-deep dishonesty is irrelevant to them.
The thing with “I don’t care” people is that is leads them to make sub-optimal and counterproductive decisions. The glue among the GOP “conservative” base is a deep longing for a Republican POTUS winner, irrational hatred of the Clintons, and disgust with the quasi-socially conservative milque-toast and loser nominees the GOP has foisted on them. Other than banning reproductive freedom of choice for women (and they can’t even see that such government policies were never in accordance with democratic freedoms), they haven’t a clue as to what public policies they actually want that they aren’t getting. Do they really believe that dumbed-down education (anti-science) will improve their lives and make their children successful in life?
So, they looked at the gaggle of GOP presidential candidates on display this time (Carson? Really?) and saw another parade of Romneys (aka losers) and one guy that decimated those losers. Then convinced themselves that this ethically challenged, cognitive lightweight ignoramus was just the guy to slay HRC and win in November. They probably still can’t fathom why Palin was so toxic to the ’08 ticket. They can’t differentiate legitimate criticisms of HRC from their personal animosity for her and therefore, totally miss that those critics would ever consider voting for a Palin or Trump. Once a con-man has made a sale, the sucker will turn him/herself into a pretzel to justify the choice made. To do otherwise feels like an arrow pierced thought their ego.
Thus, fully expecting that HRC would be the Dem ’16 nominee, they proceeded to back the one guy that may do more damage to HRC than the others could, but he’s also the one that, short of an unimaginable miracle, is “unelectible.”
But isn’t this the political equivalent of jaywalking? It reminds me of breathless articles bout how insurance companies make decisions that lead to people’s deaths. Yes. We know. This is how the powers that be act. They take millions from Big Finance, they makes friends with foreign zillionaires, and they break ‘jaywalking laws’ that the little people like you and me can’t.
No — it’s like busting Al Capone for tax evasion because the evidence required to bust him for other crimes that authorities and some number in the general public had no doubt that he was guilty of was near impossible to collect.
at least more recent) example:
like “busting” (via impeachment) Big Dog Clinton over blowjobs between consenting adults.
Why would I use an example from an impeachment case when speaking of being busted for one crime that could be proven over additional crimes that were more difficult to prove?
WJC’s technical crime was perjury, not blowjobs — and liberals/Democrats only make themselves look stupid for claiming the latter, and using it as a fallacious cudgel against those that disagree with. Clinton made a call that he could cover-up his unsavory (but not illegal) behavior by lying about it and the worst case scenario would be a he-said she-said situation which he has had some experience with in the past and it hadn’t hobbled him. Whether or not he would have fared better by not lying will never be known, but he would have avoided impeachment and probably not lost his law license.
But let’s be clear, it was his behavior that triggered all this. And Starr was ruthless and clever enough to set up a trap for him. As I’m consistent in opposing entrapment by authorities when otherwise there is no crime, I gave him a pass on this as did at or near a majority of the public.
Since I have never used WJC’s perjury in that instance in any criticism I’ve ever voiced about him, those like you that pull this stunt to discredit me piss me off. And don’t pull out the Benghazi fallacious cudgel with me either because I’m on record wrt the attack on the State Dept compound attack that HRC did nothing wrong. I also read the State Dept ARB report and IMO it adequately addressed the issues under HRC’s control.
Because it’s apt! Duh. They “got” him for something very different from what they initially went after him for. Get it? You might want to compare the original charge to (i.e., scope of) the independent counsel’s investigation with the Starr Report and articles of impeachment. The analogy with the Capone case looks pretty obvious. Startled by you even questioning that.
Clinton’s “crime” was neither perjury nor blowjobs, it was whatever out of the endless stream of pseudo-scandal shit the VRWC flung at the wall and the Fools for Scandal then chased after for them that they could get to stick. And he finally obliged them with Monica. Obviously not blameless, and it was stupid, and stupider to lie to cover it up, but the witchhunt was ridiculous, like the “case” for impeachment, and Clinton’s climbing approval and historically uncharacteristic (for 2nd term mid-term) 1998 Dem gains in Congress showed the majority of the public agreed (and cost Gingrich his Speaker’s job).
As for
WTF? Careful, your paranoia may be getting the better of you. I have no idea what “stunt” you’ve convinced yourself I “pulled”, nor how you managed to read any attempt “to discredit” you into my comment. I suggested a parallel, an analogous example. Sheesh!
Don’t play dumb. Be adult and own the inapplicable insults you so frequently hurl at others in your zealousness to dismiss/discredit anyone to the left or right of you.
in support of indictment conspicuous by their absence, Madame Prosecutor.
Sadly, not the first time I’ve noticed you taking unwarranted offense over nothing (and likewise launch unsupported accusations).
“Inapplicable insults” “hurled” based on perceived relative position on ideological spectrum alone, not on highly dubious/ridiculous content?
Gonna need to see example of that before it would be possible for me to “own” it. Not aware of it ever having happened. (Oh, right, of course that’s no doubt just me “playing dumb” again, hunh?)
As far as I can tell, the report does not say that she discussed the TARGETS of future drone strikes.
It simply says that one email refers to future drone strikes. We have no idea whether this was operationally specific information or not.
I don’t care what she discussed in her emails. She used personal email to conduct official State business.
I work for a very large transportation company, and if you conduct any company business using non-company email, you will get fired.
It is something you just do not do — which makes her decision to do it so baffling.
piece several have linked here.
Not quite so cut-and-dried as you paint it, imo.
Drum’s piece does a good job of laying out the whole classified/unclassified “issue.”
My concern is that Clinton conducted unclassified State business on her private server — that is a fact — and I have not heard any explanation yet as to why? Why did she do something that she had to know would give her enemies ammunition? Maybe she miss-judged the situation and did not see the political risks? Given what the VRWC has put her through over the last three decades I doubt that she just made a mistake.
Clinton knows that everything she does will be put under an electron microscope, so why do something like this that is just silly?
It does not fundamentally change my opinion of her, but it sure makes me scratch my head and wonder.
that’s all it is: unlike many, I will not presume I possess the Superpower of knowing what’s in her heart and mind) that she acted as she did motivated (at least in part) precisely by wanting to avoid more of “what the VRWC has put her through over the last three decades . . . “.
Doesn’t excuse the misjudgement imo. Does make it understandable (to at least some degree) imo.
It doesn’t matter whether anything reported is true or not, the problem is it’s all we hear about the Clinton campaign since…the beginning of her campaign. It’s what millions of Sanders’ supporters were worried about from the beginning of the primary a year ago–that were Clinton to be nominated, all we would hear from the mainstream / traditional media non-stop during the general election season through the election, and until she was impeached (perhaps) later in her first term would be endless crap about a Clinton in the White House. It’s been true all along and will continue forever with Hillary Clinton as the nominee and, if she wins, as president. Gridlock for at least four more years — regardless of Congressional outcomes which don’t look very good for the Democratic Party.
Why in god’s name did you folks nominate this woman?
Because 45% of the Democratic base just love the Clintons. The Clintons are for them what Reagan was for 90% of the GOP base. They don’t care about policies and behaviors of those they put on pedestals.
Another 7% of the Democratic base wants a woman in the WH (and a portion of them would probably accept a Republican woman if she were like Susan Collins).
And another 8% only wants a winner and can’t fathom other than a centrist-type Democrat being such a winner. They also view HRC as someone that has surmounted all the fake scandals thrown at her by the GOP and therefore, she’ll do the same in the general election.
Or (to summarize Marie): it comes down to power. The people who opposed Clinton didn’t have enough. Now we have to figure out what to do with the situation we’re presented with.
I live in a state that does not require party registration. I have never considered myself a Democrat. As an independent voter, I don’t see the result of the primary as an issue of power.
One person, one vote. All else aside, the winner won the most votes and the most delegates.
There is a scenario in which the loser could, having won the most votes and leading in delegates at the end of the process, have had a victory stolen due to the will of super-delegates. This scenario did not occur and therefore the issue of power is mostly irrelevant.
It was not an issue of finances either. There was, at least initially, an issue regarding media coverage due to underdog and outsider status.
My personal opinion of why Bernie lost is that he started too late and failed to make enough of a contrast with HRC on foreign policy and civil liberties. He was never going to overcome the lack of institutional support, as an outsider.
Oh, bravo! Well done, indeed!
Cokie would be so very, VERY proud of you!
They impeached Clinton. Gore lost. Bush won. Cokie was right. Think of Cokie and her ilk as whatever you think that makes comparing them to me the precious insult you think it is. They were right. Didn’t matter if it was true or not. Still doesn’t. My point stands.
accurately describing the unethical journalistic malpractice of the Worse-Than-Useless Corporate Media’s Beltway Village!
Duh! That’s the point! And that’s the problem!
The mystery is why you’d want to go along with/endorse/enable/accept as normal that malpractice (to the point of echoing Cokie to an uncanny degree), rather than repudiating and raging against that particularly perfidious and harmful machine.
As for the “precious insult” bullshit, you’ve seemingly been reading (and now aping) too much Marie3. Both of you need to grow up. As just noted, the similarity between what you wrote and Cokie’s Law practically demands the comparison, which is completely valid. If you perceive that accuracy as an “insult”, well . . .
What’s up with the autoplay videos? And a Trump ad, no less. If we click through do they get charged and Boo gets paid? That’d be cool.
Well, Woodward and Bernstein you ain’t. (And Woodward was merely a cog given a story to follow.)
The number of people in the general public that considered the Watergate break-in (from the moment the burglars were busted through their trial) important enough to get to the bottom of it were few and far between. Recall that WaPo only assigned a couple of junior reporters to work on it as time permitted and it developed. There were developments before the trial, but few people “gave a damn.” For those that did, the development dribbles felt like Chinese water torture because what we “knew” based on the characters involved, including Nixon, is that it wasn’t some 3rd rate burglary. Our frustration was heightened as we had to watch a good and decent Dem nominee going down as the WH CREEP was going to win in a landslide and the real story (which even now remains unknown) seemed nearly impossible to crack regardless of the many leads that dead-ended.
It was an attorney friend at the time who pointed out to me that Judge John Sirica getting the burglary case was a potentially the best break in the matter as of that time. Sure didn’t look promising throughout that trial — until, boom. However, even then all the subsequent investigations and events that transpired for over another year, only slowly became of more interest to more people. Near half (or more?) of the public were caught completely off-guard when Nixon resigned.
Political scandals (sticky fingers, abuse of power, etc.) more often than not go unresolved or languish for years because journalists and the public writes them off as “nothing-burgers.” Instead efforts and attention gets drawn to faux scandals: who’s diddling who, who got some chump change, who can we make pay because my loved one died in an unfortunate event. Meanwhile, Bush/Cheney lied, people died, who cares? Who cares about how for the first time since 1932, the “banksters” were suddenly able to make huge fortunes and trash the economy? Instead we get, the VIP culprits back into power.
What if she named her Secretary of State now, someone that shows she has better judgment than Obama did when he named her back in 2008? Maybe a plan to keep Kerry on for a couple of years after she’s elected. Would that help reassure us that she plans to hire reliable people that know more about how to do their jobs than she did as Secretary of State? While she’s at it, I’d like to know now who she’ll nominate as Treasury Secretary and Secretary of Defense. As is, it’s hard to know if her judgment is any good at all (if it ever was).
I’m sure that saying that if she is elected her Secretary of State will be (1) Victoria Nuland, (2) Samantha Power, (3) Susan Rice, or (4) a 74-year-old John Kerry would really bring in the votes.
Maybe if Daesh is dead and gone on election day for sure or if there are breakthroughs with Russia and China, Kerry might be considered for a transition. But what do you gain by announcing it ahead of election day?
How close to a graphic pander do you want Clinton to come?
How many people who are not political junkies will read the details of the FBI report?
People will mostly see second hand sources.
How many undecided voters are there really?
All I’m confident about is that the next two months’ campaigning is going to be extraordinarily ugly. I still think Hillary will wipe the floor with Trump at the debates.
Oh, right, think I’ve got it now.
Probably because I recall Gore “wiping the floor” with dubya by any rational criteria, e.g., marshaling detailed, factual, Reality-Based arguments that dubya’s claims for economic proposals were “voodoo economics” (as “someone famous” once memorably framed them before largely adopting them himself; and as indeed they proved to be when put into practice) . . .
. . . only to have the Gore-hating Beltway Village of the Worse-Than-Useless Corporate Media endlessly loop amplified “sighs” and the “intimidation” of Gore approaching dubya in order to “correct” the finding from post-debate instant-reaction polling of people who actually watched a debate that Gore had “won” it, turning it into a widespread deception of people who mostly hadn’t watched it that he’d instead “lost” . . .
[see also]
[and also too]
[and furthermore]
. . . not to mention the gross journalistic malpractice of the Village’s serial lying by inventing Gore “lies”-that-weren’t through endless misquoting, distortion, misrepresentation, and stripping away context to support that earlier iteration of flogging a narrative of an “untrustworthy” candidate (because, of course, if one candidate lies like he breathes, including endlessly contradicting himself, often as quickly as later in the same sentence, then the Worse-Than-Useless Corporate Media Beltway Village’s Doctrine of Both-Siderism requires . . . )
. . . coupled with the very consequentially stupid triviality of which candidate they might personally prefer having a beer with . . .
Shorter me: it’s quite possible (historically proven, in fact) for a candidate to “wipe the floor” with the opponent and have this matter little/not at all if the Worse-Than-Useless Corporate Media are determined to negate that outcome.
You may be right, of course.
And then there may be a moment when Hillary Clinton turns to her opponent and says, “Please proceed, Mr. Trump.”
You might think so at the time of the debates, but the public will buy the media spin that keeps the election close enough to require lots of expensive advertising.
And as we learned in 2000, that makes the election close enough to steal.
And even progressive Democrats have not figures how they themselves were hornswoggled about Gore by the media in 2000…and how Gore’s campaign staff played right into the trap.
I’m glad Robbie Mook is not like Gore’s campaign manager.
https:/www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/09/02/heres-a-tale-of-two-scandals-guess-whic
h-one-will-get-more-play?utm_term=.7ee9a46090d5
The Plum Line
Opinion
Here’s a tale of two scandals. Guess which one will get more play?
By Paul Waldman September 2 at 1:01 PM
“Whenever some new piece of information emerges about Hillary Clinton or people close to her, we’re told that it “raises questions” of some kind, which means it’s being shoehorned into a larger narrative that says something fundamental about her: That she’s tainted by scandal, or corrupt, or just sinister in ways people can never quite put their finger on.
Yet somehow, stories about Donald Trump that don’t have to do with the latest appalling thing that came out of his mouth don’t “raise questions” in the same way. They’re here and then they’re gone, obliterated by his own behavior without going deep into question-raising territory…
…If you as a journalist are going to say that something “raises questions,” and if you know the answer to those questions, you have to say that, too. So in this case, the question the (Doug) Band email raises is, “Did an aide to Bill Clinton get a diplomatic passport from Hillary Clinton’s staff when she was Secretary of State, something he was not entitled to?” The answer is — and pay attention to make sure you grasp this answer in all its complexity — No…
…Now let’s pause for a moment to savor the idea that (Pam) Bondi, the highest-ranking law enforcement official in (Florida), would solicit a contribution from someone her office was in the process of investigating. She did solicit that contribution, and Donald Trump came through with $25,000.
Or actually, his foundation paid Bondi’s PAC the $25,000, which is an illegal contribution. Trump’s people say this was just a clerical error, and Trump himself reimbursed the foundation — that’s what the IRS fine was about. But days before getting the check, Bondi’s office announced that they were considering whether to go after Trump University, and not long after the check was cashed, they decided to drop the whole thing.
Here are a few questions this story raises: How many Floridians were scammed by Trump University? When Bondi and Trump spoke, did Trump University come up? What was the basis on which Bondi decided not to join New York’s lawsuit? Why didn’t she recuse herself from the decision? Are there any other attorneys general Trump has given money to, and had any of them received complaints about Trump University, the Trump Institute, the Trump Network, or any of Trump’s other get-rich-quick scams that were so successful in separating ordinary people from their money?
Those kinds of questions are what spur more digging and allow news organizations to not just write one story about an issue like this and then consider it done, but return to it again and again. If they decided to, they could get at least as much material out of the issue of Trump’s scams as they do out of Clinton’s alleged corruption at the State Department. But I’m guessing they won’t. Some stories “raise questions,” and others don’t.”
Whatever happens in the next 2 months, and it will in fact be whatever, her administration is already damaged. Whatever credibility she had with Republicans and ability to work across the aisle is pretty much nil.
The Senate may go Dem. Plenty of uncertainty there. OH is going to Portman. I see WI and IL as pretty solid for flipping. Not sure about the rest. Some say PA and NH – I’m not following enough for that. Regardless of what happens, D will have at most a 2 seat advantage, just in time to see 2018, which is gonna be a blood bath for Dems. Senate is almost certainly flipping back in that election. The house majority for the Rs will be 50 votes, and not even Social Security is safe.
That’s what we are trading for Hillary.
But what do I know? I know one thing – I have a better feeling and insight into the Trump voter than most here. And when Trump goes down, they are not going away.
>>ability to work across the aisle
where are the repubs who are willing to “work across the aisle”? Answer: there aren’t any. So blaming that on HRC is bullshit.
We often agree but not in this instance. There are Republicans that will work across the aisle with HRC. More than Obama has had, but they also will do so as far behind closed doors as possible. They were there or learned their ’90s history well and that worked extremely well for their agenda and electoral successes. It’s not that they don’t want the TPP or ‘Grand Bargain,’ it was just that electorally it didn’t work for them to back either coming from Obama because they put themselves in the trap of “if Obama is for it, I’m against it” as their strategy to take back the WH in ’16 and can’t retreat from that position when it didn’t work.
It’s the centrist Democrats and the Republicans bipartisanship that’s killing us. And those that vote for either don’t recognize that. So, we’re stuck.
Clinton’s ability to work across the aisle with Republicans was nil from the time Bill Clinton beat the first inevitable Republican in Arkansas and became popular for “liberal” policies (for Arkansas in the early 1980s.)
Being a two-fer, the share the role of being targets for GOP hate. Or hadn’t you noticed that when it comes to GOP hate there is no middle ground that Democrats can adopt that will be satisfactory short of capitulation.
Beating Trump is all that matters. This is the easiest choice in the world.
Without recapturing Congress, beating Trump is a pyrrhic victory.
And it takes a Presidential landslide of historic proportions to take back Congress.
Without recapturing Congress, progress on legislation at the federal level in the case of a Clinton victory would be problematical, it’s true. At the state level — where most of the policies that actually affect peoples’ lives are set — it would be still be a toss-up: IIRC Democrats control the executive and legislative branches in only 7 states and even there, who knows?
But keeping power out of the hands of Trump and the people he represents is far from chopped liver. And there are more fields in which to be active and issues around which to organize than just legislation.
Winning with Clinton is a pyrrhic victory. Winning with Sanders is a pyrrhic victory. Winning with the Senate and/or the House as well would be a pyrrhic victory because of the kind of Democrats the party would recruit to win purple districts and because the power the right-wing media would still have to lie to the people who desperately want to believe them and nothing else.
I don’t do “go big or go home.” I’ll take what I can get, thanks. The districts are drawn in such a screwed-up way that I don’t think we’ll see a historic, or even technical, popular or electoral landslide again.
Well, your ability for tolerance of what you get is about to be tested in the next decade.
Unless Democratic Parties wise up and take back more legislatures.
I’ve seen Democratic stumblefuckery before and lived through it. I’ll take it any day over deliberate, malicious destruction from the GOP or institutional inexperience from whatever vanity-ticket is running a distant 3rd or 4th.
I don’t think you understand his point. The GOP isb’t going to be shut out from the presidency forever. Heck, they might get back in in either ’20 or ’24. Does anyone really think they’re going to reform before then?
Agreed. I think there are two arguments that need to be addressed w/r/t Clinton specifically and the election in general.
The first, and more narrow one, has to do with the topic of this post: the emails, the server, and the shifting and incomplete explanations offered for all by Clinton. On this, previous commenters (especially fladem and dataguy) have covered the important points:
I can’t refute this and I don’t see any point in trying. Because whether or not you can parse up some explanation that waves away criminal liability (and gets you onto the terrain of figuring out what the definition of ‘is’ is) the fact remains that It. Was. Just. So. Fucking Stupid. And it didn’t just put her at risk, as it turns out it’s put the whole country at risk.
Because (and this gets to the second argument) let’s take a look at Trump. Trump does not fit the textbook definition of a fascist but that hardly matters: there was no textbook definition of a fascist until the fascists came along and wrote the book. What does matter is the fact that if Trump is elected he will, by both necessity and preference, rule as a fascist. Although Trump has been inconsistent on practically every position he has taken, the one position he has been consistent on is his support for white supremacy. By doing so he has mobilized and energized white supremacists and elaborated a vision and a platform on which they can leverage their movement and build their numbers. Should he win the election we will be faced with a white supremacist movement that will be mass-based, heavily armed, institutionally rooted in law enforcement and paramilitary organizations, and politically empowered by their capture of the Republican Party, numerous state governments, and the federal government. This movement, coupled with Trump’s already stated political goals, will represent an existential threat to people of color especially, and working-class people in general. A Trump victory would entrench a system that is utterly failing us and make our work of transforming the country much more difficult. While we have to assume that this movement will continue to grow no matter what the outcome of the election, it is important that it hold as little formal political power as possible.
The critique of Hillary Clinton that the Sanders campaign elaborated can be summed up in five words: “the empress has no clothes”. This was accurate, if limited. But people got it: Clinton’s political circle and her allies are broadly the elite corporate politicians of the Democratic party. This is the multinational capitalist wing of the party that pushes a neoliberal program of free trade, union-busting, privatization, and war. Her record speaks for itself: she is not a representative of our movements, her core interests are not ours. Growing numbers of people see that the leaders of the Democratic party are not our friends and cannot be trusted to fight for working people or people of color. They provide no solution to the crises we face. I think this is a positive development and I have no interest in covering for Clinton.
However, as BooMan points out in the post, because the left and progressive forces are relatively weak, our choices in these fights will not be of our own making. So as usual, we are forced to make the best of a less-than-ideal situation and choose between a less-than-ideal set of options. And again as usual, our goal is to do this in a way that sets us up to be in a stronger position to take more political power in the future while best protecting out situation in the present. In this election that means voting to defend our organizing space. Rather than choosing between candidates or platforms or concepts of the “moral high ground”, we have to vote to expand the terrain on which we fight.
For this reason, for the people of the world, for our families and loved ones, for our movements, we have to defeat Donald Trump and his allies — and that means Clinton must win the contest.
So we have to vote for Clinton today, build the resistance tomorrow.
Tomorrow is never coming. There will never be a Republican presidential nominee that Democrats don’t frame as an existential threat. (If they could do it to Mitt Romney, they can do it to anyone.)
You can not weaken a political institution by unfailingly voting it into power. Lesser Evilism may be a coherent political philosophy. But make no mistake. It means the boot of the Democratic Party stamping on the face of progressivism forever.
If you want to see this all as nothing more than Lesser Evilism that’s your choice but the reason I brought up movements and expanding the terrain on which to fight is that we can reject the political passivity that Lesser Evilism represents.
I disagree with the view that you seem to hold in your comment above that elections are moments of individual moral reckoning. I look at them as fights between coalitions of social, economic, and political actors over the levers of power, in which we can act in ways that affirm our agency and materially affect the outcomes to our advantage. And expanding the terrain on which to fight is to our advantage.
Where do we expand the terrain here? Against all the odds and in spite of all the conventional wisdom, Sanders came close to beating Clinton for the nomination. In the process he forced her to adopt numerous political positions that she had no intention of endorsing at the outset of the campaign. I do not believe that she will honor any of the promises she made once she’s elected, but the fact that she was forced to make the promises at all represents a shift in the balance of political forces: today, unlike in the 1990’s, huge sections of the US are against neoliberal trade policy and decisive sections of the base of the Democrats are critical of police violence. Clinton is in a precarious position very different from that of her husband: she is a neoliberal representative of capitalism who must govern in an era in which neoliberalism is no longer considered legitimate and where key constituencies she must rely on are engaged in uprisings, strikes, and direct action. I think this shift in the balance of political forces makes a Clinton presidency inherently unstable, vulnerable to movement pressures, and a preferable terrain on which we can mobilize and fight. That’s expanding the organizing space.
Under Trump, the space collapses. And one or the other of them is going to come out the winner.
Tomorrow will never get here on its own. We have to help it along, and I want to improve the conditions under which we do so.
If we were to go back to doing nothing the day after the election, expecting that the liberals we (hypothetically) elected would now solve the sorry state that the country has come to, that would be giving up the organizing and the organizing space both. It would be a choice for passivity arising from the Lesser Evilism that you condemn.
But that’s not a choice we’re required to make; we have agency, we have alternatives.
yes, this is the argument. Clinton is a flawed candidate, there’s no reason to refuse to air whatever facts we have and discuss her flaws. I think it’s extremely naive to assume that the Clinton server was not hacked by more than Guccifer and that Wikileaks won’t spring an Oct surprise. but electing Clinton we’re also electing the dem party, hopefully swinging the Senate. I have no patience with the “Trump is scary, shut up and fall in line” arguments; that’s not the route to transparency and recovering a democratic process
“the fact that she was forced to make the promises at all represents a shift in the balance of political forces: today, unlike in the 1990’s, huge sections of the US are against neoliberal trade policy and decisive sections of the base of the Democrats are critical of police violence. Clinton is in a precarious position very different from that of her husband: she is a neoliberal representative of capitalism who must govern in an era in which neoliberalism is no longer considered legitimate and where key constituencies she must rely on are engaged in uprisings, strikes, and direct action. I think this shift in the balance of political forces makes a Clinton presidency inherently unstable, vulnerable to movement pressures, and a preferable terrain on which we can mobilize and fight. That’s expanding the organizing space.
“Under Trump, the space collapses. And one or the other of them is going to come out the winner.”
Thank you. This encapsulates better than anything I’ve seen the reasons why even those who can’t stand Hillary Clinton can vote for her in very good conscience. Of course it builds on what Booman and Fladem have already said.
Bottom line is, this election is not simply about Hillary Clinton. There is so much more going on.
as I’ve seen the actual choice we face . . . and, critically, it’s consequences . . . described.
Outstanding post — thank you.
As bad as Clinton is, your description of the true danger of a Trump win is very chilling.
A Friday dump on Labor Day weekend in 2001 would not have been noticed. In 2016, it is a signal to “Look over here when you get a chance.”
To me, what this shows is that the US government is incapable of setting up a usable secure network that fits the style of operation of people at the highest levels of government.
And Presidents who might in the past confer with Bernard Baruch can no longer because of donors and emails and putative quids pro quo.
And the Clinton campaign staff blithely sails on, to use words said of W.
There is a train wreck coming in November that will make 2000 look like a minor Constitutional crisis.
God, I hate what the conservatives have made of this country.
We damn well can’t even elect a mediocre President anymore.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/08/julian-assange-american-press-supports-demon-hillary-
clinton-227597
Julian Assange: American press supports `demon’ Hillary Clinton
By KELSEY SUTTON 08/31/16 01:48 PM EDT
In an interview with New York Times investigative reporter Jo Becker on Wednesday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange accused the press of supporting Hillary Clinton, whom he likened to a “demon.”
“The American liberal press, in falling over themselves to defend Hillary Clinton, are erecting a demon that is going to put nooses around everyone’s necks as soon as she wins the election, which is almost certainly what she’s going to do,” Assange said in the interview, which was broadcast live Wednesday on Facebook.
That guy is such a shitheel.
He’s got a major grudge about having delivered truth and found himself a target of prosecution with a huge potential downside.
Maybe he thought Hillary Clinton would fix the issues that Cablegate exposed. Mostly she decided to plug the leaks and full steam ahead.
It’s not pretty, but it is understandable.
Well gee, I guess we go with the shitheels we have, and not the avatars of justice we wish we had.
I’ll take Manning or, hell, even Snowden over this reptile any day.
Without Assange, Manning likely would not be in jail. And we likely would not have known about the murder of an al Jazeera journalist in Iraq by gun-happy US air support.
Tunisia likely would not have shed an authoritarian.
And pizzas likely would not have been bought for the Madison WI capitol occupation by Egyptians over the internet.
Not that he planned any of it.
The thing that kills me about Assange here is his unqualified claim that the U.S. media is protecting Hillary. Much the opposite.
The thing that angers me about Assange is that the evidence is clearer every day that he has chosen to try to get Donald Trump elected, which reveals that he acting as an enemy of those of us who want to increase press freedoms and decrease state-sponsored violence. By Trump’s own statements, he would be markedly worse on both issues.
…was made by Booman: “It’s a dispiriting choice but not a hard one.”
Hillary Clinton has done some marvelous thing for the American public. Hillary Clinton has not been the type of person thus far to get a street smart handler who can see down the road that the email server not being serviced by the State department, with an impenetrable firewall between the SOS state things and all things related to the Clinton family is just a huge gift wrapped gift to the cottage industry that hates all things Clintonian. Hillary will find this person, and fast.
Donald Trumps speech in Arizona and his hiring of the president of Citizen’s United, David Bossie alone is enough reason to not vote for the most evil North American politician since Jefferson Davis.
The folks who hike their panties up and want to squawk about the Clinton misfires will be visible and pontificating until Bill and Hillary are dead and buried for 50 years.
Grow up. There’s a monster on the other side and the Supreme’s will either get fixed to modify and re-institute the Citizen’s United abortion of a ruling or that will just become the accelerated end of the traditional way of American life.
In our ground and water ways we have traded $2.19 a gallon gas for 5.6 magnitude earthquakes in Oklahoma and a few surrounding states. That represents Hillary. A potential for damage.
Trump is a 9.4 magnitude quake. Where the fractures will occur is probably everywhere. 9.4, Trump. a lose/lose proposition.
“Hillary Clinton has done some marvelous thing for the American public. “
Name one.
Well, her lobbying was instrumental in getting the 1994 crime bill passed – as she boasted in Hard Choices.
Got a lot of those super-predators off the streets.
1994 Crime Bill (something we liberals loathe, especially in retrospect from 22 years later)?
“her lobbying was instrumental in getting [it] passed”; she even “boasted” about that in her book! –Rhombus9
SCHIP, widely recognized as an unalloyed benefit to the country?
“She had no official position in 1997, so her support was the same as any other citizen.” –The Voice In The Wilderness
Really, you guys should put your heads together, get your Clinton-she-devil talking points straight. As it is, you undercut each other.
There you go again acting like:
for daring to ask for evidence. For acting like the one-time impression of Democrats as being in the reality-based party. Right now we’re supposed to get in line and not discuss the major conundrum that this election has placed before all of us and potential options moves that can mitigate this mess.
Derangement-Syndrome could not be better demonstrated than by this implication of the inconceivability to you that Hillary could ever have done a single positive or laudable thing for the American people . . . ever.
Pretty much says it all.
Just to pre-empt any squawk claiming unresponsiveness:
link [put this one first in recognition of not-exactly-friendly-to-HRC source]
link
link
This bullet from that last link should be fully sufficient and dispositive all by itself, though obviously there are numerous others:
You are claiming she was the author of those bills? Or just voted for them along with the rest of the caucus?
incapable of doing your own homework?
Hint: 1997.
Hint 2
Hint 3:
She had no official position in 1997, so her support was the same as any other citizen. Kennedy introduced the bill.
Again, your capacity for clinging to such a transparent counter-factual goes very far in both confirming and explaining your HDS.
Kennedy hizownself, btw, disagreed with you:
And again, that’s from your own linked factcheck, which you betray no evidence of having actually read, or else an astonishing ability to ignore all of it that doesn’t support your preconceived conclusion (i.e., 100% of it).
Reviewing:
You (skeptically, clearly implying such a thing was inconceivable): “Name one.”
I link to many, plus, as requested, “name one” (Clinton’s role in getting SCHIP passed, and then implemented).
You link to a factcheck, implying it calls into question that one thing, when in fact it refutes the questioning of its validity. That’s its whole point!
Unbelievable.
You might want to stop digging any time now. Just a thought.
Her support was the same as that of Elizabeth Warren, a White House aide in getting the Consumer Finance Protection Board through Congress.
As First Lady, she and Bill could entertain members of Congress at the White House, among other things, something no “ordinary citizen” can yet do.
Let’s make this simple. She was the primary lobbyist with Congress who coordinating supporting groups in applying pressure to the right members of Congress at the right time — with the added force of people understand that her lobbying was supported by the President of the United States.
That’s one of the reasons that Republicans hated her as first lady; she was effective at using the informal power of networks and of the position of First Lady. You saw the same hatred of Michelle Obama when she took on policy issues like healthy diets and gardens.
One?
State Children’s Health Insurance Program
Some others:
Vote against confirmation of John Roberts
Vote against confirmation of Samuel Alito
Rescuing S-CHIP out of the rubble of Hillarycare is kind of amazing considering the distractions at the time.
http://www.factcheck.org/2008/03/giving-hillary-credit-for-schip/
That claims it was Kennedy’s Bill but Hillary supported it. Since she had no official position, I think you can score this one to Bill Clinton if you don’t credit Kennedy, which I do.
But maybe I’m nit-picking and she did one thing 18 years ago.
Subhed:
And literally everything in between supports that conclusion, including that the only “disparagement” questioning her right to make the claim was coming from (duh!) “political foes”. (To my knowledge, Kennedy himself was a “foe” only in the limited sense of the context that his actually non-committal quote was from 2008, after he had endorsed Obama. But the factcheck also notes that, before doing so, he’d said this:)
Your ability to latch onto what your own linked factcheck in fact refuted, ignoring the rest, would seem to go a long way towards how you manage to maintain intact your HDS (Hillary Derangement Syndrome).
You might want to touch base with reliable sources that are in the know about S-Chip. According to Billmon how was there as a reporter at that time, it was members of Congress that rescued S-Chip from HRC inept handling of it.
Voting against Robert and Alito were freebies. Neither nomination was anywhere close to being in jeopardy; so, the NY Senate team stuck together on both of those.
So Senator Kennedy lied?
Here’s one of many reviews of the record:
http://www.factcheck.org/2008/03/giving-hillary-credit-for-schip/
All those additional people who gave Hillary credit for keeping the Clinton Administration in support of a well-funded Law are lying?
I think instead that you and, if you are representing his sentiments accurately here, Billmon are so absorbed in your utter hatred of the Clintons that you compulsively misreport and mischaracterize on this and many other issues.
Their struggle is our struggle.
Who do you trust with the Nuclear Codes?
ENd of story.
Barack Obama has done well so far.
Even W did better than expected with the nuclear codes.
But W didn’t go around shouting “You’re fired.”
Of those running? Johnson. Not the person who can’t understand internet security.
Hey, do us a favor, quit the tiresome 24/7 carping and make the case for Johnson here. You’ve told us you won’t vote for Clinton and you don’t appear to trust Trump or Stein, so help us understand how someone who wants to eviscerate all Federal programs and sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership makes the grade for you.
I want to see you defend your place as a member of the progressive community while doing so.
At the risk of duplicating another comment or post, here is Mother Jones’s publication of the two relevant FBI documents: a report on their investigation (47 pages) and notes of their interview with Hillary Clinton (11) pages.
A.J. Vicens, Mother Jones: Here Are the FBI’s Files From the Hillary Clinton Email Investigation
The first fact that struck me was that over a four year period of use there were only 68 email threads that contained Classified or Unknown Subject or Country emails that were classified and remain classified. The relevant ones apparently are printed in the report but redacted for the public that is paying for this investigation of 81 email threads.
What else struck me was how much people are reading in assumptions of nefariousness or incompetence into what is a straightforward succession of email system implementations over six or so years.
And finally, how much depended on the fact that the investigation began three years after she had left the State Department. The email system had gone through several reconfigurations over that time.
Anyhow, for those with the time and the curiosity, this is what the hubbub is about.
Thank you, Tar Heel. I read Kevin Drum’s post at Mother Jones earlier and thought to myself where is all this nefarious intent being implied and/or stated as fact on the part of Hillary Clinton coming from? Not from what I read.
It seems to me that so many who post here want to read the very worst into anything that HRC does. Reading comment threads so often are a debbie downer experience as many who post here seem to delight in wallowing in their own cynicism. It’s all so self-defeating.
Once again, I’m going to turn my eyes to the prize and work to get out the vote in my little corner of the electorate and steer clear of Booman’s comment threads.
I have two words for you: Down Ticket
You are so close to being right on things, often, it drives me crazy.
I have no intention of voting for Clinton in order to body-check Trump. She’s a serial killer. I have no reason to play along with anyone in this thrill-ride. I voted Obama, and he was horrible, but not the worst. He resisted neocons in some places, yet we’re still at war in a fuckload of places. His acquiescence to those wars & support of TTP,etc., makes him a total dick. Hillary will be far worse. Forget even talking about it.
I’ve looked over the comments, and while many of them are thoughtful, they seem to lack some context (both about the State Department E-mail aystem and the speciific drone issue) that would help to understand what happened.
It isn’t necessaryn to defend Clinton’s use of a private system for her unclassfiied E-mails (she should not have, as she has acknowledged and as Department information-systems staff warned at the time). Nor is it necessary to believe she was entirely forthcoming about everything connected with the matter. My concern here is simply to explain what happened in context, drawing on over 25 years as a Foreign Service officer.
The Department maintains two regular E-mail systems, covering unclassified (“the low side”) and Confidential/Secret (“the high side”) material respectively. (Top Secret is unavailable outside intel channels and is irrelevant here anyway.) These systems are entirely separate, using different desk workstations, and moving from one to the other requires logging out of one and logging into the other. For almost all staff, there is no way to move material from one to the other (although of course it’s possible to mistakenly write original “class” material on the “low side” — a serious error).
Theoretically managing these two systems is clear, and instructions about them are drummed into all Department staff early on. The problem is on the operational end. The “low side” is easier to use and more flexible, and it is also the only way to send material to Blackberries and other PDAs, which are not class-cleared as a rule. Electronic access to the “high side,” on the other hand, is pretty much limited to fixed points, especially desktops and the limited number of class-cleared laptops. (This of course is a special problem with senior people who travel, and Clinton travelled A LOT.)
Communicating with people who are “very busy” (office directors and above, say) is much easier on the “low side.” Communicating with people who are “unbelievably, inhumanly busy” (most in senior jobs and especially the Secretary and those in his/her orbit) is so much easier on the low side — especially for time-sensitive material, which is a very large fraction — that those trying to do so are constantly tempted to shade the classification standards a bit just to get the material to the right person in time. (That’s no doubt the reason some ambassadors were found to be doing this in material sent to the Secretary).
The drone issue was a special headache. The USG treated many drone activities as classified; but of course those who were attacked knew about drone strikes, which were also reported by NGOs and in UN channels to which the USG had to respond. There was essentially a disjuncture between the real world and diplomatic imperatives on one side, and the classification situation on the other. That made handling drone-related material especially problematic, and I understand that problem (combined with the one I discussed above) accounted for a number of the supposedly “classified” E-mails on Clinton’s server. (When this business blew up initially, I thought that was the problem; I was right.)
This is not, as I indicated, in any way a defense of the overall arrangement. But it may help to understand, among other things, the reason some of the E-mails look worse than, in context, they actually were — which may have factored into the FBI’s decision not to pursue criminal charges.
What Digby sez:
digby, Hullabaloo: The Village Redux
Read it all. digby on “the Village” again.
BS article — completely misunderstand who and what ‘the Villagers’ are. Not all that different from ‘the Villagers’ anywhere; although ‘the Villagers’ in capitals have more power than those in the hinterland, and therefore, they are more protective of their turf.
The Clintons were long ago accepted into their club. An invitation to a party at HRC’s house is prized and nobody remembers Sally Quinn.
How many Bernie smear articles were published by WaPo late winter/early spring 2016? How many HRC smear articles in the past sixteen months? Haven’t checked but doubt the one place that didn’t act like cable news flunkies wrt Trunp is ‘the Villagers.’
digby is generally a thoroughly misinformed commentator, fully predictable, never insightful, a huge waste of time. Why does she have such a good rep? I have never read a single piece of hers that gave me a single valid insight.
She is also totally unwilling to hear any voice of disagreement. Hullaballoo long ago eliminated comments. Totally without any value at this point.