Hillary Clinton spoke at the National Association of Black Journalists and National Association of Hispanic Journalists joint conference and took questions too. Here’s a tweeted clip in which she blasts Trump, explicitly calling him out for playing footsie with white nationalists:
.@HillaryClinton: "America is better than Donald Trump." Full video here: https://t.co/SzCddBvvzy #NABJNAHJ16https://t.co/KmQYRQZNSH
— CSPAN (@cspan) August 5, 2016
Good. However, CNN’s account of her appearance focuses on the stupid fucking email thing again:
Hillary Clinton on Friday doubled down on recent misleading statements about her use of a private email server at the State Department, even as she acknowledged that she “may have short-circuited” her answers.
At a gathering of black and Hispanic journalists in Washington, D.C., Clinton was asked about her recent assertion that FBI Director James Comey had said she was “truthful” in discussing the issue — a claim that a number of media outlets, including CNN, have debunked.
“I was pointing out in both of those instances, that Director Comey had said that my answers in my FBI interview were truthful. That really is the bottom line here,” she said. “What I told the FBI, which he said was truthful, is consistent with what I have said publicly. I may have short-circuited and for that I will try to clarify.”
Clinton went on to repeat that she “never sent of received” classified information on her private email server — a statement that is inconsistent with Comey’s testimony on Capitol Hill.
The email controversy has continued to dog Clinton’s presidential campaign, particularly as she suffers from the widespread perception among voters that she isn’t honest or trustworthy.
Jeebus. Maybe it’s time to start saying, “The FBI investigated the issue for two years and found no basis for charges. I consider the matter closed.” Explaining will sound like dissembling to voters, and there’s no explanation that will satisfy the Beltway hacks, who are itching to slam Clinton to achieve fake equilibrium after covering the Trump implosion for the past week.
Speaking of Trump, he told Mike Pence to go get his fucking shine box yesterday. Video at the link:
TRUMP: He [Pence] came to me — he called me the other day, he said, ‘Do you mind—’ because he likes Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan’s a good guy, actually. No, he’s a good guy. So, Mike calls me yesterday and he says, ‘Would you mind if I endorsed? I won’t do that if it creates any complications or problems, I would absolutely not do that…’ He’s the greatest guy. He’s the greatest human being. And he said that and he said, ‘But I like him, he’s a friend of mine, would you mind if I endorsed him? I will not do it if you say no.’ I said, ‘Mike, you like him? Yes. Go ahead and do it, 100%.’ And he endorsed him.
Trump’s alleged point is that any rumors of a “fissure” in his relationship with Pence are bogus. That’s normal enough — candidates routinely assure supporters their ticket is united. But only Trump would do so by portraying his running mate as a servile toady.
I hope the thick-headed Pence has enough self-awareness to find that embarrassing. And I hope he will suffer many more humiliations for throwing in with an unhinged, narcissistic demagogue.
Trentrunner
GOP: Where the scrotum is orange and the fissures aren’t only anal.
Iowa Old Lady
Do we have any data on how voters are responding to the email story?
piratedan
dear press corps…
1) has Hillary been indicted?
2) has she broken any laws?
3) did her predecessors do the same?
4) so does this really fucking matter when compared to the guy running on the other ticket?
Hungry Joe
Thick-headed Pence accepted the VP nominee spot under Donald Trump. Why would you even bother to hope that he has enough self-awareness to be embarrassed about anything?
Trentrunner
So much truth in so few words. Classic Betty.
scav
His vision is clearly of a national, international, galactic game of “Donnie May I?” “Yes you May.”
Jeffro
@Trentrunner: Seconded – quit explaining, Hillz, and move on. We have more important things to talk about, if you ask Corey Lewandowski (still employed by CNN, still asking about Obama’s Harvard grades).
MJS
Either just say that you consider the matter closed or, better yet, stop taking questions in these types of forums, until and unless there appears to be a need to. As it stands now, all you need to do is spend all of your time campaigning, on your own, with your running mate, with your surrogates, or with Senate or House candidates. Because when someone from the media is given the opportunity to ask you a question, IT WILL ALWAYS BE ABOUT THE SERVER!
Kay
I’ve just given up. They will ask her about the emails forever and ever and ever.
What is the point of having investigations at all? It doesn’t matter what the conclusion is- there will continue to be ‘questions’ for all eternity.
Xantar
Why am I getting a Trump ad? Do the people who target these things have any idea what they’re doing?
Kay
@MJS:
How is there anything more to SAY about the server? Now they’re asking her about what Comey said! “What Comey said” had a week. Why are we back there again?
Frankensteinbeck
Hillary can’t just ignore the questions when they’re asked. That’s even worse than an explanation. And no matter what she says, however brief it is, the media will lavish attention on that and pretend she spent the whole meeting making desperate excuses. That’s how they want the world to be. They hate the Clintons, they hate Hillary even more than Bill, it’s driving them up the wall that their smear attempts aren’t destroying her, and no amount of also piling onto Trump’s train wreck will change that.
hellslittlestangel
I like what George Will said about the VP slot (seriously, I do): that anyone who takes the job of being Trump’s running mate will be unqualified to serve by virtue of his willingness to be Trump’s running mate.
Shana
@Kay: I don’t understand why, when asked about the server she doesn’t say “Yes, in retrospect it was a bad decision. But let me remind you all that my server was never hacked.”
Kay
@Frankensteinbeck:
The truth is she’s run a really good campaign so they don’t have anything to ask her other than the emails. They have no interest in asking her about policy, so it’s emails or nothing.
They have nothing else. If her campaign was a huge disorganized mess with backbiting and gossip they’d be talking about that. Even they must know the emails are boring.
sigaba
@Iowa Old Lady: Hillary’s up 10 points a month out of the email story, so I think it’s not really playing.
Jeffro
@Kay:
Yup, see also, “Benghazi, investigations 1-8 (for now)”
When even the FBI Director saying, ‘no prosecution here’ doesn’t satisfy…now we are off to ‘perjury before Congress’…there is no pleasing these folks and no one shouldn’t even try. And Frankensteinbeck, the short-answer response is not HRC ignoring the questions, it’s really the only way to ‘win’ here: refuse to play.
Isn’t this how “MoveOn” got started???
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Comey: Clinton did not lie to the FBI
By Nick Gass
07/07/16 10:47 AM EDT
Seriously?
scav
@Xantar: Maybe BJ is the secret state he’s been going on about!
dww44
Somewhat o/t, but on his 6 p.m. show yesterday, Chuck Todd, reporting on the President’s Pentagon news conference which had just ended minutes earlier, said that the President was defensive when talking about the 400 Million dollar cash to the Iranians. Seriously, did anyone here think that Obama was defensive when he explained how that all came down?
Matt McIrvin
@Shana: Because she doesn’t know for sure it was never hacked. It’s hard to prove a negative, and it’s possible that Assange is sitting on hacked info from the private server as his October surprise.
Betty Cracker
Team Clinton rolled out a new video slamming Trump for his ties to Putin. Her Twitter peeps are lambasting Trump left and right. Someone didn’t get the “let up” memo. Good.
Bex
@Shana: Because the headline would be HILLARY ADMITS BAD DECISION in gigantic type.
aimai
@Kay: Well, this was what they did with every other “scandal”–no matter what investigations there was always something they could demand that she account for. She should absolutely stop answering. Not make a big deal of it but just say “asked and answered. New business?”
Mike in NC
@Jeffro:
Drumpf must not pay very well, considering some of his flunkies are extremely stupid.
Betty Cracker
@dww44: I didn’t think he was defensive; he sounded incredulous that anyone was buying this “hot new story” angle on an issue that has been fully documented and in the public domain for many months now.
cmorenc
I’m waiting for Hillary to speak at the National Association of Hippie Journalists. Cause they should be represented in the rainbow coalition as well. DFHs for Hillary :=)
/snark
Kay
@Shana:
They have a narrative that they’re trying to prove with the emails- that the Clintons stay right this side of illegality. It’s not a national security issue. It’s a character attack. She knows that.
This is a game. They’re really asking her “do you play fast and loose with the rules?” That’s the question she responded to with the apology and she’s right- that’s what they’re asking her. It’s NOT substantive. It’s NOT national security. The server “proves” something or other about Clinton’s character. That’s what they want to show.
The problem for me is if you ask someone the same question over and over they will eventually screw it up. It doesn’t “prove” anything. It just means you asked them the same question over and over and they eventually got it “wrong” – used the wrong word, wasn’t specific enough, conflated two events. It’s just not indicative of anything. It’s gamesmanship, not fact-finding.
Trentrunner
@dww44: And Miklaszewski (who was at the conference and asked questions) corrected Todd and said Obama appeared “frustrated” with the question. Which he was. Since this whole new scandal was neither “new” nor a “scandal,” as Obama was painfully at pains to point out.
You can tell he really has had it with the media bullshit. Good on him. They seem to forget he literally DROPPED A FUCKING MIC on them at the last Correspondents’ Dinner.
aimai
@Shana: She has said that, over and over. You are presuming that some kind of admission of guilt would cause the press to move along. That’s just wrong. Factually nd historically wrong. The press never gives up questioning and slagging off on HRC regardless of the logic, and regardless of what she says. Its better to think of HRC and the Dems as caught in an abusive, domestic violence, situation in which the vicctim at first thinks that if they just find the magic words and are peaceful and thoughtful enough they won’t get a beating. Its only very late in the game that you realize that the abuser is going to abuse you regardless of what you do–that all that other stuff is just dressing. The dinner wasn’t really cold. The remark you made wasn’t really rude. Its just that the abuser uses the idea that you provoked him to mess with your head and the audience.
Kay
@aimai:
I’m to the point where I agree with that. The reason they say they keep asking it is it goes to the “trust” issue- but they tied it to the ‘trust” issue- they made it a character test.
Trentrunner
@Kay: I thought Hillary’s answers about not being “liked” or “trusted” were awesome. She answered [paraphrase]:
When I have a job, people like what I do and I get results. Example: NY Senator. People were skeptical, I worked hard to earn trust, and I won re-election with 67%. Example: Secretary of State. Obama and I had a tough, at times rancorous campaign. But then he turned around and asked me to be his SoS because he trusted my judgment. I left SoS with 66% approval rating.
But when I run for a job, the usual forces come gunning for me, and we get what we get. Yet when I do a job, people respect and trust me because I get results. I have a long record of doing that.
I wanted to applaud.
Iowa Old Lady
@dww44: I didn’t think so. To me, he sounded annoyed. Is that what Todd means?
Jeffro
@Mike in NC: Well yeah that and a) the irony of a moron like Lewandowski questioning Obama’s grades is almost too much, plus b) he’s not only trying to re-fight the OUTGOING prez (instead of HRC) he’s trying to re-fight the 2008 campaign, much less the 2012.
Do try and keep up, Corey!
Keith G
I can’t get too worked up about questions over HRC’s silly decisions about her email set up and the aftermath. James Comey seemed to be saying that the decisions about the handling of the emails were at the least sloppy and possibly reckless and if the IG’s report is to be believed, that sounds about right. Getting questioned about this is political kharma.
David Corn observes:
The good new is, I think, that this problem is already baked into the cake and will not be a factor in changing anyone’s mind from here on out. Where it may come into play is if some other story comes up seriously challenging Hillary’s forthrightness. Then it will be just another brick in the wall, as it were.
JMG
“You didn’t get my husband with Monica and you won’t get me with this. None of you are ever going to be Woodward and Bernstein because you don’t have the chops. Any other questions?
Jeffro
@Iowa Old Lady:
Yes – to us, what comes across as understandable irritation with stupid questions comes across as “defensive” in Todd’s book. If he were to see the President justifiably irritated at a dumb press question, that could open up a whole closet full of self-doubt that Chuckles is just not prepared to face. ;)
Iowa Old Lady
@Kay: When you talk to people in normal life, if you ask the same question more than once, they interpret it as a sign you think they gave the wrong answer and often change their answer. That’s what seems to be happening here.
cmorenc
@Hungry Joe:
Pence may have actually made a quite worthwhile shrewd calculation in accepting Trump’s VP nomination offer, albeit a quite cynical one. If Trump wins – he wins. If Trump loses – Pence might not have any immediate electoral future in the wake of a decisive Trump defeat, but a comfortably remunerative spot at either Fox or an outfit like the Heritage Foundation probably awaits Pence-in-exile, Since Pence’s image to the Fox News RW crowd is that of a sensible, stabilizing force on the Trump ticket, the toxicity of Trump probably won’t rub off on Pence within that crowd unless Pence (to quote the late Gov Edwin Edwards of Louisiana) gets caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl. Look at how swell it’s worked out for another ex-governor who failed as a national candidate, Mike Huckabee (albeit Huckabee wasn’t the VP nominee on a toxic ticket).
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Bex: You are correct!
Calouste
@Mike in NC: Trump is one of those managers who never hires anyone smarter than himself. Which really doesn’t leave a lot of people..
tobie
@aimai: This is my impression, too, that she’s now often said that in hindsight it was not a good idea to have a private server.
Frankly I’m finding it hard to follow what people are claiming HRC lied about. It’s not the server per se since she never said she didn’t use a private server. I think it boils down to 3 friggin emails (out of over 20,000) that contained classified material, although evidently that material wasn’t clearly marked as classified (i.e., it had a “c” next to it somewhere but not the usual markings at the top of the page). That’s the nearest I can get to what all this hoopla is about. Can anyone clarify? It’s hard to know any longer what CNN is referring to or the Wash Post with its 4 pinocchios for HRC’s statements to Chris Wallace. This seems oh so petty. Gotta have some scandal to maintain the line both sides do it.
SiubhanDuinne
Completely O/T, but I can’t keep from thinking about that poor dog that was abandoned in John’s new house. I imagine he’s at the vet right now, and I hope he’s not scared and that he’s able to be saved and brought back to full robust health and many happy years remaining to him. Hope John will post as soon as he can, and I’m crossing everything crossable that it will be good news.
And now I’ll go back up top and read this entire thread in order, and my next comment (if any) will be on point.
p.a.
@Calouste: Leaves about 40% of the US population, sadly.
JMG
As we have learned from the birther movement, evidence refuting a right wing charge is not enough to get them to drop it. The short answers recommended here are Clinton’s best shot, but since she was speaking to what she perceived as a friendly audience she made the mistake of going into more detail on an issue for which murky is too kind an adjective.
There are no unhackable servers, BTW, public or private. Some are harder to hack than others, but they can all be had.
Percysowner
@Frankensteinbeck:
Absolutely this. Plus, the media desperately needs the election to be a “horse race” so that they have something to talk about between now and November. So Trump will get to lie and not be challenged and Hillary will be hearing about the stupid emails and the stupid server until the day she dies. Heck, I’m sure her obituary will talk about the stupid emails and the stupid server, even if she has two successful terms as President.
Juju
@Shana: She actually has said almost exactly that, I believe during the “60 Minutes ” post VP announcement interview, and probably other places. I think no matter what she says about the email situation, someone somewhere will say it’s the wrong thing to say. It truly is a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation.
Betty Cracker
@SiubhanDuinne: Yeah, that poor critter. Oh well, one lucky thing happened to him: John found him. I am hoping for the best too.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Percysowner:
Let’s not forget poor old Vince Foster!
Trentrunner
What’s next? The Pivot.
Not Trump’s. The Media’s.
Not one network is carrying Trump’s speech right now. But every cable news network is talking about Hillary’s email answer at today’s press conference.
The Pivot is the media turning to Hillary to “both sides” even up the race. Will be annoying to watch.
And, strangely, he who brought us this far will save us: Trump.
That ochre bag of stale fart air can’t keep his big fat mouth shut for 48 hours. The media will find him the shiny object again soon enough. Perhaps before I finish typing this. :)
JustRuss
@Iowa Old Lady: Purely anecdotal, I have a coworker I consider rational and reasonable and he thinks Hilz should be in jail for her email crimes. I think there’s resentment about elites getting to break the rules with impunity, and the forces of evil have done a nice job of directing that at Clinton. Given who Trump is, it shouldn’t be hard to turn that around. Quit playing D and start pointing out all the rules Trump has broken with his “renegotiating”. Not Hillary, of course, but surrogates should be pounding on the crap Trump’s gotten away with.
Betty Cracker
@Trentrunner:
That’s good. May have to swipe that one.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@SiubhanDuinne:
That dog picture broke my heart. I can’t even describe what seeing that felt like.
Fervently hoping for a good outcome. I trust John to do the right thing.
aimai
@tobie: One of the things I think they are arguing over is the concept that “she” “sent” “classified” “emails.” Its true that there were emails marked “c” (improperly/unclearly) down in chains of emails that passed over or through her server. But she is not accused of having “sent” them–she doesn’t seem to have seen or sent them. But the right wing is acting like she, personally, deliberately, sent classified/secret intel type stuff to our enemies. This isn’t even close to what actually occured or what the FBI investigated but because this is what the right wing voters think all media questions on the topic simply confirm this assumption. You can debunk it as much as you want but people have a will to believe this crap. Just like it doesn’t stop the right wing Obama haters from accusing him of being a Muslim plant because he has spent his entire adult life attending Christian churches. You simply can’t disprove this stuff.
Quinerly
@Trentrunner:
MSNBC carried it long enough for Trump to call Hillary “unhinged” and then start in on a rant about how the press has not covered that Secret Service guy’s book. That book has come and gone and has been thoroughly debunked. Trump still talking about it.
SiubhanDuinne
@Xantar:
I’m getting lots of furniture, furnishings, and home decorating ads, even though I’m not the one moving into a new house. It could be a lot worse, I guess, based on your experience.
Groucho48
@Keith G:
I believe every SoS in history kept control of their personal correspondence. Would you like dozens of your worst enemies examining every personal email you have sent or received over the last decade? Imagine if she had made some snarky comments about this or that world leader, or, national politician? Or, just gossiped a lot. Or, did the stuff lots of folks did in their personal emails? No matter how ordinary they would be, there would be a firestorm. Every possible controversial statement would be taken out of context and quoted endlessly.
Not to mention… why should her personal emails, of all the SOS emails, be treated differently? And, even if she did turn them over, there would be accusations that she had hidden or erased the “really bad” emails. She knows it, I know it, you know it, Korn should know it.
slag
@Juju:
I’ve got to agree with this. At this point, the email discussion is sheer pedantry masquerading as news. The record is pretty clear for anyone who wants to see it. Overexplaining is simply not getting her anywhere because she’s bound to contradict herself again no matter what she says.
Trentrunner
@Betty Cracker: It’s easy, when one knows the Trump Insult Model:
[color resembling burnt sienna] + [expandable container of gasses] + “of” + [cloacal noun phrase]
Example:
Donald Trump, that adobe-colored sack of shart sludge
JustRuss
@cmorenc: Good point. Pence isn’t bad looking, he could have a lucrative career as a Reasonable Republican talking head. His political career was getting pretty shaky, playing Trump’s less-crazy shadow might be a smart move.
EllenH
@tobie: This! All of this crap is about three (3!) fucking emails that were not even properly marked, and two of which the State department says didn’t even contain classified info at the time. The four Pinocchios were because she told Chris Wallace that Comey said she hadn’t lied to the public and he actually declined to opine on that, but did say there was no evidence she lied to the FBI. And another thing, there are no missing emails–the FBI was able to retrieve all of them off the server! So Trump’s whole line about inviting Russia to hack the server to “find” the emails was bullshit.
SiubhanDuinne
“Hillary struggling on the email server story” is the lead top-of-the-hour headline on NPR. The reporter closed by saying “She [Clinton] did not add clarity.”
Villago delenda est. All of ’em.
Percysowner
Here’s a video of Hillary being asked the same question over and over for decades https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSYZ12LGVxw I mean Good Lord, does anyone ask Donald Trump or Ted Cruz why nobody likes them?
Also too, Ben Carson just let us know that the reason we don’t know about all the good things Donald Trump has done, is because Donald Trump is too humble and has too hard a time praising himself. I thought we could all use a good laugh.
Redshift
@Keith G:
I generally like Corn, but that’s just stupid. If she had turned 30,000 personal emails over to congressional Republicans instead of removing them, it wouldn’t have been “settled” either; we’d be hearing about “embarrassing” material from now until the end of time.
The real mistake (and it’s a technical decision, not something that an executive should be expected to know anything about) was not rigorously segregating personal and official email.
It also really bugs me that the media talk about Hillary’s “trust” problem, and never mention that a year ago the GOP explicitly set out to use the email “scandal” to paint her as “untrustworthy”! They talked about it and everything! I suppose I should take solace in the fact that they were equally dim about the effects of the Obama campaign’s efforts to “define” Romney. They always believe that anything negative is just an inherent fault of the candidate that voters are picking up on.
Trollhattan
@Kay: But, but, what about the server in Benghazi in the clutches of zombie Vince Foster, huh? Have we gotten answers about that? Questions must be asked!
dww44
@Betty Cracker: Thank you. I didn’t think he was defensive either. Have I ever said I don’t like Chuck Todd? If not, this is why I don’t like him. “Obama was defensive” was the meme Todd left about the whole press conference.
tobie
@aimai: Thanks for the explanation. I gather it suits the media to be as vague as possible about what the supposed wrongdoing was, since this makes everything else that’s said seem like a coverup for a nefarious plot. My impulse would be to list the facts as succinctly as possible, but you’re right that it really doesn’t matter what you say, since the attitude of the press seems to be, “Prove us wrong,” which is an impossible task.
In other news: NPR had a story about the permafrost in Siberia melting and bacteria frozen in dead reindeer, like anthrax, coming back to life. I think I’ve seen this scenario in horror flics before.
dww44
@Trentrunner: Thanks, I didn’t see the rest of Todd’s coverage. I was so miffed I changed the channel. I like Jim M. He’s a straight shooter with no agenda to sell.
slag
If she would just use the word “knowingly” would it help?
eric
@SiubhanDuinne: she will say it all clearly at the debates (if they happen) and will cite Colin Powell saying he did the same thing when SoS. Trump will hurumph and say that he has the best, most cleanest colon, and that Hillary is blaming the scandal on her lady parts.
No one effing cares about a server when the other candidate is a Russian pawn.
dww44
@Iowa Old Lady: I agreed with your assessment. But, Todd clearly said Obama was defensive. An altogether different take.
Loviatar
They’ve just spent the past 40 years asking her the same sexist questions what makes you think they won’t spend the next 40 years asking her about a server.
Hillary Clinton has been asked the same sexist questions for decades
Felonius Monk
Pence and self-awareness are strangers. He’s too stupid to be embarrassed. There is a reason that he is Trump’s Pet Rock.
Juju
@dww44: I can’t take Chuck Todd seriously until he wipes that chocolate pudding off his face.
Tom Q
For those who ever studied the classics: the Greeks had a term called “formulaic composition”. It meant that, for ease of oral recitation, certain words were always surrounded by other words. For instance, it was never simply “dawn” — it was “early-born, rosy-fingered dawn”.
The DC press corps has its own version of formulaic composition. Whenever there’s a debate, the preview will be called “Fight Night”. So will the aftermath, even if it’s the politest two hours anyone’s ever sat through.
Whenever the subject of emails comes up with Hillary, it will be said she gave an unsatisfactory answer. There IS NO satisfactory answer, in the view of the press; merely for the subject have come up will be said to lead to an unsatisfactory answer (unless, I suppose, Hillary were to say “I admit it: I’m guilty of treason; put me in handcuffs”).
This is just the random crud Hillary will have to periodically deal with on her way to crushing Donald Trump. The press will never see her as legitimate, as they never saw her husband that way. Winning is the best revenge.
dww44
@Juju: It IS distracting!
Soylent Green
AFAIK there are no people involved. We talk about Trump, so the bots give us Trump.
SiubhanDuinne
@SiubhanDuinne:
@eric:
And now NPR is completely redeeming itself by conducting an astonishing, excellent, very moving interview with Khzir Khan. This is why I keep listening, despite the occasionally stupid news headlines.
gogol's wife
@Betty Cracker:
Ooh, that’s a good one. I especially like that “comments are disabled.”
Redshift
@JMG:
And email is the least secure medium imaginable, unless you’re using a closed secure messaging system! If you’re using standard email, without end to end encryption, the plain text of your emails is passing through servers you have no control over, where anyone could potentially read it. So classified information being sent via email at all is a much bigger deal than whose server is being used at one end! But that’s apparently considered entirely okay for government officials as long as they’re sending it from an official server.
Seriously, for a tech professional, watching the media talk very seriously about computer security is like watching a bad techno-thriller, only not as funny.
SiubhanDuinne
@eric:
Months ago, Bernie (remember him?) said, with great truth, “Nobody cares about your damned emails!” And Hillary has that terrific new ad that shows Trump as a Russian pawn. So I think you’re right on both counts.
Roger Moore
@Trentrunner:
I think that the more distractions there are the better. Trump is like a 3-year-old. If there’s one thing he can’t stand, it’s somebody else getting attention, and he’ll act however he has to in order to steal the attention back. If the media starts focusing on Hillary and the Olympics, Trump will say something even more outrageous than anything he’s said so far to get the attention back on him. The harder the media tries to pivot away from him, the crazier he’ll act.
1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet)
@Betty Cracker: I believe the reporter actually covering this plainly told Chuckles that he thought Obama sounded frustrated, inasmuch as this was old news that had been covered back in January when the deal was announced and everyone who was awake and paying attention knew that. This did not appear to please Toddles…
rikyrah
@Trentrunner:
I LOL everytime I read your comment ??
Villago Delenda Est
@piratedan: MUST HAVE HORSE RACE!
SiubhanDuinne
@dww44:
I’ve always liked him. Alas, I believe I heard the President say that he’s (Jim M) retiring. Hope NBC brings him back as a commentator now and then — he’d be infinitely better than most of their stable of has-beens.
(Note: THREE TIMES, autocorrect tried to change “has-beens” to “has-beers.” LOL.)
gogol's wife
@Tom Q:
Good comment.
Roger Moore
@Tom Q:
I suspect they would accept a traditional Samurai apology.
rikyrah
@Kay:
They didn’t get the scandal that they wanted. Plain and simple. This is who they are, Kay. You expected more from them. I am PISSED that at a gathering of Black and Latino journalists, with all the problems that face our communities, that they wasted a question on this bullshyt. ???
MJS
@Kay: Because of the endless search for a horse race. This is a blowout right now. The media cannot abide a blowout, at least not one in which the Democrat is winning.
rikyrah
@Kay:
She has learned a lot from 2008. She is actually listening to the Obama alums.
Mai.naem.mobile
@Xantar: Trump hires the best people who target all the right people.
Keith G
@Groucho48: I am not and I am not planning to run for the office of President.
That said, sometime around 2001, my employer was a state government bureaucracy. We had a meeting about the importance of keeping personal business off our work email accounts, and vis versa. One of the issues was that since our work was all to often involved in either 1) an internal appeal or investigation process, or 2) external legal discovery, or even 3) open records requests…. the mixing of private and public correspondence was short sighted and stupid. Those concerns were raised 7 years before HRC took office.
Yeah, two SoSs used a similar process….Colin “Saddam is using mobile labs on the back of trucks” Powell and Candy “Mushroom Cloud” Rice? I would want a Dem SoS to do better.
But I will restate two things: Since she was running for Prez, a bit of forethought is not too much to suggest. And most importantly, the reaction to that bit of silliness is already accounted for and will not be a factor in changing minds from here on out unless some other related news is found. So, even acknowledging some continuous inquiries from the press and some future attack adds, this story has lost any power it had.
D58826
@aimai: The facts don’t matter. If something happened and Bill/Hillary were within 10 miles of it, then they MUST have had something to do with it.
Trump routines stiff people that he does business with. Newt is about to stiff 2012 primary vendors to the tune of 12 million dollars. But Hillary
1. gave some speeches on the lecture circuit.,
2. got paid for giving some speeches
3. won’t release the transcripts
This is another major Clinton ‘scandal’.
In the meantime Newt/Mitt/Trump/et.al.
1. gave some speeches on the lecture circuit.,
2. got paid for giving some speeches
3. haven’t been asked to release the transcripts.
Crickets
One of Trumps advisers has been paid for speaking in Moscow. It’s been reported on but doesn’t seem to cause the same amount of fainting and pearl clutching that Hillary’s speech’s generate.
Baud
I wish liberals had a backbone on the email thing. One thing I admire about conservatives when faced with bullshit.
EllenH
@slag: I actually think she did phrase it that waytoday, actually.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Equal douches under law.
sigaba
@Redshift: There’s some pithy cliche about perception being reality that the political press thumbs like a rosarie every time they report something but worry if it’s actually true or not.
Mai.naem.mobile
@SiubhanDuinne: Diane Rehm this morning introduced the topic of whether Trump had dementia or some other medical issues. I don’t even know what to say. Also when they did special coverage of Trump introducing Pence as his Veep,they were joking about Trump. Not like in a Mornin’Ho way but more making fun of the incompetence of Trump.
RK
So I just heard a clip of Trump calling Clinton “unhinged”, “unstable”, “unbalanced”–remarks so silly that not even the dimmest and most hateful rube could buy it–and it just becomes harder and harder to believe he wants to win. He also speaks with the deftness and vocabulary of a third grader so if he’s just playing a moron his acting skills are top notch.
Gravenstone
OMFG. Yahoo news has some moronic feature up now where they’re inviting idiots to comment about the presidential race. The current top comment is some cretin going on and on (and on …) about “finding God”. The second is apparently a Berniebro with this pithy bit of wisdom, “dont be surprised if bernie wins on write in votes. in spite of all the backroom dealing the people still have a voice”
Fantastical thinking useless fucking morons.
D58826
@Kay: And the media wonders why she doesn’t give press conferences. No matter what she says or how she says it they will pick apart every word. I remember when the Monica story broke and Bill denied the affair three different times in one day. Now obviously we now know he was lying but at the time the media spent the day comparing each statement to see if he used the same participle or the future tense or was it the past tense. It didn’t matter that all three statements basically said the same thing.
Maybe if they had spend as much time grilling Bush/Chaney/et.al. on the lead up to Iraq we might have avoided the foreign policy disaster of all time.
Emma
They hate her — they hate both Clintons — because they have never played the dirty game of seduction most politicians play with them. No cute little nicknames, no preferential access, no barbecues with the President manning the grill.
It’s the same reason why they’re always trying to find a chink in BHO’s armor. They want a President that they can feel superior to at some level, and they will tear down those that make them feel their deficiencies.
Kay
@rikyrah:
Oh, well. It may not matter:
It’s just stream of consciousness up there…just winging it.
Keith G
@Redshift:
I heartily agree with this:
That leads me to reflect on something my mother said to me a whole bunch of times:
Pogonip
Could Betty, or Adam, or somebody, please start a new topic so that Cole will then bigfoot it? I want to know if the dog is going to be OK.
1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet)
@cmorenc: What happens to all these Republicans if the Murdoch boys decide to stop the gravy train? It’s one of the reason Fox is so expensive to run. I mean, unemployed coaches and baseball managers treat ESPN as a spot to keep their health insurance covered while they wait for another job opening in actual sports to appear, but that doesn’t seem to me the model with these folks and Fox. If James and Lachlan decide the party is over, what will these poor robins do then to keep warm? Where will Ollie North go? Who will give Bill O’Reilly the time of day?
FlipYrWhig
Am I right that the problem is “Hillary didn’t use a State Dept. server even though that was the official policy,” and all the brouhaha about classified information is more of a warning about if classified information is off the State Dept. system someone MIGHT see it; and not “Hillary or someone close to her exposed classified information to people who shouldn’t have had it”? It seems like a lot of people want to the story to be “Hillary mishandled classified information” but don’t really understand what the scale or effect of said mishandling were and for that reason never explain it. But I defer to the local experts.
aimai
@Keith G: Ridiculous. HRC’s decisions have had nothing–nothing–to do with the way she has been pursued as a criminal since her first day as first lady. The reason the republicans have so many sticks to beat HRC with is not because of anythign she has done–since she, in fact, has done nothing any differently than Powell or Rice did before her–but is simply because they can. Because there is nothing underneath all of these attacks but the Republican will to power, a will to rule or ruin, that HRC, Obama, and democrats in general have become the target of.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay: Someone should ask him how many people approximately are in a platoon, or a company.
I can’t imagine him having the slightest idea.
1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet)
@Mai.naem.mobile: Although Trump’s father lived into his nineties, he spent the last 6 years of it with Alzheimer’s, according to his Wikipedia biography.
I don’t know what the current thinking on heritability and Alzheimer’s is, but there is that piece of family history, apparently.
Baud
BTW, when did Comey become the Oracle of Truth?
I can’t imagine any other context where we would give the FBI director that status.
Technocrat
While I too would like Hillary to give a short, sweet answer on the emails, I think she is caught between a rock and a hard place. She can give an answer that is technically correct, but sounds like bullshit. Or, she can give a good sound bite answer that some pedant can tear apart.
It’s the difference between “I never sent a classified email” and “I never knowingly sent a classified email”. The latter sounds like lawyerly bullshit, the former is just begging to be disproved. I think it’s more realistic to assume (as said upthread) that there IS no correct answer.
That being said, I’d love to see her hold a press conference on the emails, and then let some nerd do a two-hour Powerpoint presentation on SecState classification policy and practices. Will it stop the questions? No. But it would force a bunch of assholes to watch Powerpoint slides for two hours.
Kay
@D58826:
The inconsistency with what Comey said is dumb. That’s what I mean by gamesmanship. They know what Comey said. Why is it important she repeat it verbatim? Now they have her on the “Comey statement inconsistency” but I still don’t know what that has to do with anything, since the original (supposed) accusation was “put national security at risk”.
They did the same thing with Benghazi. They made the administration’s statements a story. “Where there’s smoke there’s fire” means that at some point you have to find a fire. You can’t just keep asking about the smoke for a year. That’s just smoke.
rikyrah
@Emma:
They are so bitter about the absence of scandals during the Obama administration.
Bitter, I tell ya.
Amir Khalid
@Villago Delenda Est:
I have this vague idea that a platoon in the US Army is about 50 troops and a company is, like, three or four platoons, but I have no military experience whatsoever and i could of course be way wrong.
drdavechemist
@Trentrunner:
So it’s Mad-Libs for Trump insults. Got it!
Baud
@rikyrah: Not for lack of trying.
Kay
@Baud:
The Comey thing is appalling all by itself. I still maintain he was way out of line opining up there. Hillary Clinton has this effect on people. They become crusaders. It was Ken Starr all over again.
grandpa john
@EllenH: Funny how it appears that not one lying asshole media shit seems to be aware of any of these facts\. Our full of feces.ignorant lying media will be the death of us as a democracy
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
I’m pretty much an atheist (although not at all zealous about it) but this makes me believe at least that the Unverse is checking in and arranging things every now and then.
COMETH THE HOUR, COMETH THE MAN.
EllenH
@Kay: Agreed. I can’t help but wonder if Obama regrets appointing him.
Villago Delenda Est
@rikyrah: Well, there was that beige suit. SCANDAL!
@Amir Khalid: Usually it’s in the 35-50 range, and yes, in an infantry unit, you’ve got 4 or so platoons, so somewhere between 150-200 in a company give or take a few. The numbers move around based on what kind of a company/troop/battery it is, what weapons system is the main focus, or what the function of it is (say a signal company or an ordnance company).
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est: I thought it was a tan suit.
Why can’t we get an honest answer from Obama?
mike in dc
She did improve upon her previous response, but she’s going to have to be more direct, acknowledge some error and then say she considers it closed/asked and answered. Obviously she has to be prepared for the prospect it will come up at the first debate, so if she can defuse it as much as possible and perfect a response by then, that’s ideal.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay: To be fair to Starr, he was a somewhat reluctant crusader; he found nothing there in Whitewater, but he was taken to the woodshed for blurting that out and they told him to go back and find something, anything to nail Bill on.
grandpa john
@SiubhanDuinne: People who are not looking for clarity seldom find it,
Amazing how many average persons on the street understand exactly what she said, and yet people who are paid to determine the facts, can’t.
sigaba
So did Trump endorse Ryan? It’s 6 on the coast and no news. “Widely anticipated” but all I’m seeing is dead air and Trump totally didn’t kick out that baby.
Ruviana
@aimai: This. I can remember the press giving Hillary grief because of her hairbands! And I was grumpy/sad(!) to see Charlie Pierce getting into a snit about the emails today. I really like Pierce but sometimes he can be really obtuse.
Villago Delenda Est
@grandpa john: This is because they are not paid to determine fact, they are paid to generate ratings and the revenue derived from ratings.
JPL
Any news from Cole yet?
Baud
@Ruviana: Pierce is weak. What an opportunity to say something about the media. He whiffed.
JustRuss
If there were only 3 classified out of thousands, I’d say she did about as well as could be expected. Life is messy, personal and professional overlap sometime. Can we FOI Pence’s emails? I’ll bet there’s all kinds of goodies in there.
Kay
Another good poll for clinton in MI. Michigan is allegedly a Donald Trump stronghold, as you know:
Baud
@Kay: Good. Keep it up MI.
The Dangerman
Oh, come on; she fucked up. Hell, the Washington Post gave her 4 Pinocchio’s and the Post is hardly Clinton unfriendly.
I don’t care about all the hyperlegal answers or the waaaaambulance crap (wahhhh, Colin Powell did it, too). She shouldn’t have done it, got caught, and still hasn’t put it completely to bed all these many months later.
Luckily for her, Trump’s too busy tripping over his (probably really small) penis to be a viable candidate, so, yes, we will be hearing about emails for at least 4 years (or until she comes really, really clean).
Shalimar
Regarding Clinton’s SoS emails, all she needs to say is, “I am very proud of my record as Secretary of State. My emails are all public. Have you actually read any of them? I encourage everyone who has listened to this controversy for years to read as many of my emails as you can and find out for yourself what kind of job you think I did.”
satby
@SiubhanDuinne: I heard that and I was outraged.
Prescott Cactus
Received an invite to the opening of HRC’s campaign office in Phoenix, today at noon.
It’s going to be interesting if this a head fake or the beach landing of a full assault.
Click For details !
Emma
@Villago Delenda Est: He could have done the honorable thing and resigned, telling the American people what had happened. Instead he went hunting in the mud and produced a 1500-page really bad soft porn novel. He gets no kudos from me, ever.
a2dmusic
@sigaba: Been wondering the same thing. Rally’s been going on for more than an hour and I’m seeing no reports on the wires about it… yet.
I would love it if he didn’t. ESPECIALLY after the expectations got built up today that he would.
Baud
@Prescott Cactus: Sweet.
Amir Khalid
@Kay:
Isn’t Michigan the only state where Hillary lost a primary, rather than a caucus, to Bernie?
Kay
@Villago Delenda Est:
Oh, God, whitewater. I dropped out during the Clinton Years. I could not take it anymore. I feel strongly about investigations having a beginning and an end because this “certainty” that people are looking for just doesn’t happen in real life. If they go on too long the investigation becomes questions about questions. It’s not about broad themes or character. That’s not the question we asked so we won’t get that answer. Whitewater turned into, no joke, “are the Clintons good people?” WTF? They were miles from the original charge.
Mike E
@Technocrat: During the Brooks/Dionne segment on NPR today EJ said pretty much all one can: Trump lies every single day; Hillary should just rhetorically move on but still leaves the door open for speculation with her explanations… the reporter and Brooks then performed the “Hillary” which is a
gratifying sexual act‘both sides’ exercise done in under 10 secs of air time. It won’t end, no matter whatKay
@Amir Khalid:
Yes, I believe so, but I was never worried about Bernie as spoiler of the general :)
redshirt
@Pogonip: Heh. New thread up, but Cole hasn’t tweeted in 3 hours, so a bigfoot seems unlikely.
Ruviana
@Baud: Yeah, he does that periodically and it’s annoying.
Iowa Old Lady
@SiubhanDuinne: What in the world could “has-beers” mean in a hyphenated form like that?
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
Here’s my one-line explanation of Whitewater: the Clintons got conned out of their money, and the same con man tried to implicate them in his crime to get a lesser sentence.
That was it. That was what actually happened.
Tom Q
@Amir Khalid: No, he won several more (VT,, OR, WV, IN), but MI was the only one he really shouldn’t have won but did. (It may have had something to do with the pundits having declared Hillary the essential nominee a week earlier after Super Tuesday, so Hillary voters weren’t as motivated — and it was massively aided by indies: polling showed she crushed him by 14 points among MI Dems.)
EllenH
@JustRuss: Just to clarify–I went back and re-read Comey’s statement and apparently there were 110 emails that upon review they determined contained information that was classified at the time they were sent and received, but all but three of those 110 were unmarked. The three “marked” documents were the ones I was referring to–they weren’t properly marked and State disputes whether 2 of them even contained classified or confidential information.
Prescott Cactus
@Baud: The devil is in in details. Past Dem Presidential efforts were head fakes.
If I can call up and get a yard sign and a bumper sticker next week it’s a real sign AZ might be in play. In the past, no campaign supplies were allocated. If you wanted to stump door to door it meant making a drive to Las Cruses,
hovercraft
@Iowa Old Lady:
Donald and his minions have been all over TV the last few days whining about the press manufacturing negative stories about him to help out Hillary. They’ve been bleating all over the conservashpere that the media ignored Pat Smith, The Khans were a plant (?), everyone ignored Hillary lying to Chris Wallace, Hillary’s disastrous economy (?), and so in order to prove to Donald that they are not in the tank for her, they’ve been trying to gin up this e-mail bullshit again. Unfortunately for them, as with most GOP fan fiction, it only is of interest to them, no one else gives a shit.
So much like the last four times a democrat has won, the media will spend the entire election telling us how in spite of ( insert flaw) the democrat is ahead in the polls.
Clinton ’92 & ’96 – women, draft dodger
Obama ’08 – inexperienced vs war hero beloved by the press, and black
Obama ’12 – failed president, in over his head, vs respected business man
Clinton ’16 – hated liar, bitch, cold, screeching, we want something new, old
The democrat is always so deficient and their success is surprising, while the republican may have some flaws, but they are expected to be a strong contender.
Kathleen
@dww44: President Obama: Water. Chuck Todd: Like, what’s in the toilet? President Obama: Water. Chuck Todd: But, but, Brawndo. It has what plants crave.
Amir Khalid
@Ruviana:
In 2008, I remember the media giving Hillary grief about her wrinkles. Wrinkles! On a woman in her sixties! OMFG!
Grumpy Code Monkey
@piratedan:
No.
Possible violations of the Federal Records Act (44 USC 3106: Unlawful removal, destruction of records), possible violations regarding classified data (18 USC 793: Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information). The IG report is a little challenging to read for those of us who are attention-span-challenged.
Electronic records management at State has apparently been a clusterfuck for years, well before Clinton got there. That doesn’t get her off the hook, though. As the head of the agency, she was responsible for making sure all electronic records were managed in accordance with NARA. Setting up a private email server outside of department oversight kind of worked against that.
Possibly. Not an excuse, though.
This year, no. Against almost any other candidate, it would be a real problem. Fortunately Trump is such a freakshow that he makes run-of-the-mill political scandals boring.
If, through some miracle, he’s not at the top of the ticket in November (keels over, or the party says fuck it and removes him forcibly), expect this to come roaring back with a vengeance, especially if the FBI does conclude federal laws were indeed broken.
joel hanes
OT
Help put Karl Rove in jail for his role in the specious and politically-motivated railroading of former Alabama Gov. Siegelman
http://www.documentary.org/film/atticus-v-architect
Baud
@Grumpy Code Monkey: Exactly backwards. For no other candidate would this be an issue. And the FBI is done. It’s over, except in the minds of haters.
Miss Bianca
@aimai:
Wow. I’d like to see this interpretation get some more traction, aimai. Because it’s spot-on. And it makes me furious.
Frankensteinbeck
@aimai:
Having been in one of those situations, the problem is that not only can you not win, you are stuck playing the game. You can’t just ignore the abusive partner. They will hit you harder for it. You end up in a complicated damage-mitigation dance trying to guess constantly changing rules until you find a way to escape, because that misery is still better than shutting up while the abuser ramps up the pain until they get the response they want out of you.
D58826
@Kay: or you find the little man behind the curtain with the smoke machine
Emma
@The Dangerman: My ass she fucked up. She did exactly what her predecessors had done; arguably less damage, since Powell is known to have deleted most of his emails. And the Washington Post has always hated the Clintons. Always. Maybe you’re too young to remember Sally Quinn’s vendetta. Some of us aren’t.
Gah. No wonder we do so badly. We are always willing to kick our own while the Republicans get down and dirty to protect theirs.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck: What she needs is for regular people to get outraged on her behalf. Otherwise it won’t end.
Miss Bianca
@Redshift:
My Libertarian tech BFF also makes the same points. Unfortunately, he too suffers from Clinton Derangement Syndrome. It makes for interesting (ie, stormy) conversations!
D58826
@Baud: And remember he was on the Starr team as far back ans 1996, so he has no love loss for the Clintons. And as a republican if he can stick the knife in he will.
Fair Economist
@The Dangerman:
So, she handles her email *more* responsibly than any previous SecState but still gets criticized. This is just Clinton rules. She’s being held to a standard far higher than anybody else, a standard probably nobody else could pass, and it’s still not good enough.
Conflating the server with the classified info is a neat trick, incidentally. The State server isn’t supposed to have classified info either. If the “classified” info had actually needed to be secret, her server was a better location because it wasn’t actually breached.
And the “classified” info is, according to reports, discussion of NYT articles on drones.
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
Since the only people whose voices are heard in the press are the press and whoever the press feels like featuring, that’s moot. And indeed, the press acts exactly like a domestic abuser who knows their victim can’t get away.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Baud: I meant that if she were running against a sane opponent, this would sink her.
Mary G
@rikyrah: I think the journalists today felt like if they didn’t ask her the email questions, they would have been accused of either being in the tank for Hillary or unprofessional. There is a certain amount of “all the other reporters are doing it, so I must too” in the news biz.
Miss Bianca
@Keith G: You know, you’re really getting tiresome with the email crap. It’s bad enough getting it from the media and avowed political opponents. But how many times you gotta harp on it here? Are you going to change the past? (no). Are you going to change how we think about it? (probably not) What’s the point of endlessly repeating, “no, really, you guys, it really was bad, let me tell you why it was bad!”?
Baud
@Grumpy Code Monkey: Who knows? They sunk Gore, but they couldn’t get to Obama.
Fair Economist
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
This is the kind of nonsense we need to push back on. With the insanity of the classification system there is nobody, and I mean nobody, involved in any kind of substantive diplomatic or military position, who doesn’t get information via insecure channels which is “supposed” to be classified. Nobody could undergo the kind of witch hunt she’s undergone without a reference to a newspaper article or TV show coming up.
Mnemosyne
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
The FBI has concluded their investigation, found no lawbreaking, and reported that to the Justice Department. It’s a done deal. In fact, that’s what Comey’s little
temper tantrumpress conference was about — the FBI found no deliberate wrongdoing, but he still felt Clinton was wrong in his heart.The FBI has closed the case. Are you willing to accept that it was a nothingburger yet?
Percysowner
@Villago Delenda Est: I’m old enough that I not only lived through Watergate, I remember it. That was a time when prosecutors stood up to the President. Don’t tell me Starr had no choice. He could have wrapped Whitewater and moved on. He wanted to destroy Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party period. He failed, but he was committed to that job. Screw Ken Starr.
Kathleen
@Baud: John Cole is a much better writer and analyst, as are the front pagers here.
Percysowner
@Grumpy Code Monkey: Really? Because door number 2 was Ted (I’m going to make my religion the law of the land) Cruz. Kasich and Jeb! Never had a chance.
SFAW
@Tom Q:
Shouldn’t that be “surly-born, short-fingered Don”?
Keith G
@aimai: Oh come on Aimai. Both things can be true.
She has been unreasonably targeted with personal attacks since ’92 and as one of the most important officials in the country, she handled emails in a way that my fellow lowly state government bureaucrats knew to avoid some eight years earlier.
SFAW
@hovercraft:
The TV in the hotel lobby here had Fox on, with Deadbeat Donnie spewing his usual. To my ear, it sounded like “Crooked Hillary who is a lying liar and she’s lying and corrupt and she lies and she’s a lying liar who has been lying and is crooked and corrupt.”
That is not verbatim, of course, but it’s actually pretty goddam close to what he actually said. It took a fair amount of self-restraint not to yell “Shut the fuck UP, you lying asshole moron!” Probably would have been kicked out if I had.
Fair Economist
@Keith G:
That’s not true. The only way not to get caught by the kind of witch hunt they ran on Clinton is not to use email. If you discuss *anything* in email you’re going to talk about things that are “supposed” to be “classified”. Trump’s email is probably full of these “violations” as well.
Paul Begala's Pink Tie
@Loviatar: @: That YouTube video made me cry. She is so poised and cheerful, but that has to hurt, so badly. To be treated that way over so long must change a person deep inside. For her to have withstood it this long? That’s tremendous qualification right there to be President.
Robin Gittelman
@aimai: I could marry that comment!
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Villago Delenda Est: Interesting that Starr just lost his job for mishandling sexual harassment complaints.
NorthLeft12
That was one powerful tweet speech. I don’t get all the complaining about her speaking. She may not be as good as Obama, but holy mackerel, that is a damn high bar to reach.
dww44
@Kay: @Kay: Exactly the same thing that Fareed Zakiria said last evening on CNN’s Don Lemon program: that Trump is a master b.s.’er, just wings it in a stream of consciousness sort of way.
piratedan
@Prescott Cactus: supposedly latest polling has Clinton +3 in AZ
Mark B
@piratedan: I want to see Donald lose in 40 states or more. He needs to be firmly repudiated.
Mark B
@Comrade Scrutinizer: Starr got a golden parachute out of the deal. He’s always looking out for his most important client, Kenneth Starr.
Villago Delenda Est
@Comrade Scrutinizer: Indeed. Starr certainly could have done the right thing once he investigated Whitewater and found, like Robert Fiske before him, that there was no there there..that the Clintons were in fact the victims in the entire Whitewater affair.
The three judge panel that appointed him INSISTED that he find something, anything, and Starr, instead of doing the right thing and renouncing them and their witch hunt, he went along with the ongoing witch hunt, which shifted its focus from Whitewater to Monica Lewinsky.
Comrade Scrutinizer
In other news, Trump just said that it would be just great if we could get along with Russia. Just think, we could gang up with them and go after ISIS.
SFAW
@Mark B:
Good one!
Oh, you’re serious?
Deadbeat Donnie could lose all 57 states, and lose by 600 electoral votes, and he would not feel “repudiated” — he’d just pule about how it was “rigged.” And The ZEGS and The Turtle would insist that Hitlary had no mandate. (Assuming neither Chamber flips, of course.) In fact, they’d probably still start impeachment hearings on January 23, 2017. And Mitch would declare her Guilty before the Trial even started.
D58826
@Mnemosyne: 3/4 of the items on my twitter feed from the MSM areea about Hillary’s e-mails. Almost nothing about the policy issues that she talked about today.
But lets stick with the security implications of her e-mails for a moment. The Russians have hacked into the DNC servers, the DCCC servers, and maybe the campaign servers.. They have hacked into any number of government systems, including a WH system. State department employees use the non-secure system because the secure system is so old and slow. I’ve seen articles about how vulnerable the power grid is to hacking. And yet the only thing we are talking about is Hillary’s server, which the FBI found there was no conclusive evidence that it had been hacked.
Aren’t we missing something here? problem isn’t Hillary’as server; it is all of the other vulnerabilities in the government IT infrastructure. I read recently that there are 800k employees/contractors/consultants/etc with security clearances working for the government. You mean to tell me that we can guarantee none of them are shipping top secret info to the Russians.
But if Bill/Hillary said ‘the sky is blue’, the VSP’s would spend the day disecting whither he/she used the right shade of blue.
hovercraft
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Did you see his endorsements of Ryan, McCain and Ayotte? He read them in a stilting halting voice, he almost seemed to be gnashing his teeth.
SAD !
hovercraft
@D58826:
They’ve spent a week beating the crap out of the Donald, he’s whining about media bias, so it’s time to pull out their favorite chew toy and go back to work or it. Chuckles gave a tease for Meet The Press this weekend, the implication is there are numbers in the NBC poll showing that the public cares more about e-ghazi than we think. And dammit if they don’t yet the press will do everything in their power to get us to.
D58826
@hovercraft: In a sane country if the biggest mistake that Hillary ever made was the e-mail server, then she would win in November by acclamation.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@hovercraft: That was like someone had a gun to his head. Plus he spent ten minutes before the endorsements talking about what an outsider he was, and how we have to tear it all down, just before endorsing some of the most entrenched Republicans in DC.
In a sane world the let’s be buddies with Vlad should have gotten some attention, but no doubt we’ll spend days rehashing the email bullshit yet another time.
SFAW
@D58826:
Did they find ANY evidence? Or, alternately: Did they find “inconclusive” evidence?
Or is this yet another case of “Well, she can’t disprove that she didn’t do X, so she must have done it.”?
SFAW
@D58826: @Comrade Scrutinizer:
WTF is it with youse guys and this “sane country”/”sane world” crap? This is ‘Murika!!!
D58826
@SFAW: I think the way they left it was they found no evidence that it was successfully hacked but given the state of the tech world they could not rule out that someone hadn’t tried.
But yes, Hillary will have one more negative that she has to prove didn’t happen.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@SFAW: Fuck yeah!
SFAW
@D58826:
I figured it was something like that.
“Hitlary has never been able to prove conclusively that she didn’t not do something something that she shouldn’t not have not done when she didn’t not do it, so therefore she’s lying.”
Or, as James Comey (or Ken Starr) might put it: “Honesty? We don’t got no ho-nes-tee! We don’t need no steenking ho-nes-tee!”
SFAW
@D58826:
Every fucking server in the world has, at one time or another, had someone, somewhere TRY to hack it. So what? (Not directing that at you, but at the idea that Comey and his RW brethren even consider THAT an issue.)
it reminds me of the terrible misfortune of Mr. Ralph Aldis Mellish — particularly the first paragraph.
LongHairedWeirdo
Ah, you hope he will suffer many more. I misread that.
Carry on. So do I.
I don’t want to Godwin a thread, *but* this is why a lot of people supported a hateful man with a dumb-ass mustache – “if I hitch my wagon to his star, he might drag me up with him!” It’s the worst reason possible to accept the unacceptable.