You can't imagine what drives someone to note that you repeat falsehoods? And you think that the director of the FBI is "trolling" when he says that the evidence about the Clinton email server was "far" from being something that would be of criminal prosecution? You really have a disconnect with reality.
None of those things are required for the crime to be a crime. Next time you get pulled over for speeding, try arguing that no one got hurt by your crime or that you didn't know the speed limit and see if that gets you out of the ticket. And in particular, the "deliberately" thing is thrown around a lot as a red herring: Not only are there not many crimes that you can get out of by claiming you didn't mean to break the law, communications security is an affirmative responsibility. You're required to know and required to take active steps to ensure security. That means, for example, that people who knew about Hillary's crimes and did nothing to stop them were committing a lesser version of the same crime (like an accomplice). No, you misunderstand. The email scandal is the focus and has fresh relevance because it is new and because of her high position at the time (which she uses on her resume, so she must be judged on). I'm not sure how old you are or even if you are an American, but Hillary has been in the public eye on a national level for 24 years and I've never liked her. Hell, my mom is still angry that she didn't divorce Bill back in 2000! But I don't think she would ever divorce him because it is much more important to her not to show weakness than it is to do the right thing. This latest of a long line of scandals just the most recent of the results of her SOP. It's an update/reinforcement, and provides fresh clarity into her character. Absolutely, it does! The crime itself tells us that she is so arrogant and self-centered that she is willing to risk national security and disregard the law for her own convenience of not having to answer for her day-to-day actions. Hillary's actions here mirror a key component of Watergate; Nixon's arrogant stance that he was above the law and didn't have to answer to Congress while he was under investigation. And it means she surrounds herself with people unwilling or unable to say "no" to her when she needs it: http://www.usatoday.com/story/opini...tion-trump-president-glenn-reynolds/93006320/ And her response to the scandal shows us in great relief that she puts a substantial effort into lying about anything and everything that might make her look bad. The way she stepped back her lies about the classified material on the server was comical, pathetic and telling. It's a really bad combination of dishonesty, incompetence and arrogance that Hillary possesses. No, James, as I've already pointed out in this thread, this is not a binary choice. There are lots of others. That's just a falsehood people say when trying to get people to make the choice they want: falsely claiming there is only one other choice, which is worse.
No, there were 110 emails that contained classified information. You're just repeating a lie of implication from the State department when they were trying to cover for her. And repeating it wrong: the "correct" lie is two emails, not one. And that's two emails that were marked as classified when she sent them...which was intended to imply those were the only two that contained classified information -- and you took the bait. The rest that contained classified information were not marked as classified. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...ndings-tear-holes-hillary-clintons-email-def/
The implication in that statement that you are making without saying it outright is that Powell improperly had classified information on his AOL account. Otherwise, there is no reason to even mention anything about Powell and classified information because it would be totally irrelevant. That's the fantasy. And you *still* have not acknowledged that Clinton had classified information on her server. Say it with me: 1. We know Clinton had classified information on her non-secure/approved server. 2. As far as we know, Colin Powell did not have classified information on his AOL account. For the record, I disagree that an AOL account is necessarily less secure than Hillary's personal server, but that's besides the point because of the above.
There hasn't been any "long list of scandals", unless you count widely promulgated lies and deceptions from depraved professional slanderers as "scandals". Why would anyone do that? I have never like Clinton as a politician, either. But she has been a significant political figure in the national eye since 1992 - that's 24 years, not 16 - and in all that time has apparently done only ordinary rightwing incompetent stuff and mistaken compromising with rightwing bad guys. She has been at least as clean a politician as anyone running on the Republican ticket for Federal office - cleaner than Reagan, Bush, W, Dole, McCain, Romney, or Trump. Cleaner than their chosen VPs. Cleaner than the Republican Senate or House leadership. Granted that isn't saying much, but it does highlight the strangeness of the Hillaryhate crowd - they all seem to be rightwing folks, who have no real beef with anything she's actually done.
Hehe -- putting something in quotes that isn't. Yeah, it's me who is lying/disconnected from reality! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Oh my God, two emails! What a tragedy! It's all over! She's a crook! Seriously.....? Out of 30,000 emails they found 2 confidential emails. They were marked with a "c" a classification. That's the lowest level of classification. They were sent to her by a State Department employee and she returned. From her testimony, it doesn't appear she was even aware of the classification. The document's security level isn't always readily apparent. And it's also a well known fact the government has a penchant for over classification. Of the other 110 emails, the material was subsequently classified. At the time Hilary received them, they were not marked as classified. They were subsequently retroactively made classified. No my friend, you took the bait, hook, line and sinker. The fact is nothing Clinton did jeopardized national security. Here is what Ken Starr, the very partisan 3rd special prosecutor who vigorously investigated the Clintons in the 1990s has to say about Bill Clinton today. Who knew Starr would become a Clinton supporter? http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/kenneth-starr-praises-bill-clinton-223508
The relevance is that Powell's setup was fundamentally insecure, worse than Clinton's, in the middle of a seriously dysfunctional administration already guilty of major security lapses - and that was of no concern to the persecutors of Clinton: they did not care. They called for no investigations, created no political scenes, none of that. To this day nobody has any idea whether the millions of emails erased by W&Co included problems with Powell's so easily hacked setup. Of course I have. Everybody has. Try to pay attention, eh? We know that Powell was handling classified information on his setup, which was less secure than Clinton's. We know he did State Department official business on his private and insecure accounts, without saving the emails as required by law. We know that none of the current Clinton persecutors cared one whit about that, or even called for an investigation. So we know what the priorities are in the current scene. Maybe not "necessarily", but in fact it was. At least Clinton was keeping her stuff off the most easily hacked part of the cloud. And especially when you notice that Powell was doing his own classifying. What do you suppose his mistake rate was? He was never an intelligence officer or professional - he had little training in espionage cyber or otherwise: most people in his situation would make serious errors in deciding what needed to be classified and guarded, at minimum kept off an AOL account on a Microsoft platform (is that the most widely and easily hacked email platform ever invented, or just one of them?).
You're right, I forgot the exact wording. Here it is: "Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case." I'm glad to see that you are taking the side of "no reasonable prosecutor".
A Target Smart - Williams & Mary survey of early voters shows 28% of early Republican voters are voting for Hillary Clinton. That's unheard-of, and Florida is critical to Trump's presidential ambitions. The survey predicts, based upon how actual voters have voted this election cycle, Clinton will win Florida by 8%. Because early voting has been so heavy this election cycle, it might not matter that polls have recently tightened. http://www.msnbc.com/brian-williams...gop-early-voters-picking-clinton-798821443850 Additionally, Moody's Analytics, a prediction model which has accurately predicted the winner for almost 4 decades, predicts this will be a strong win for Clinton. http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/01/news/economy/hillary-clinton-win-forecast-moodys-analytics/ This is reminiscent of what we saw last month when the polls at the beginning of the month began to tighten, but was quickly followed by dramatic tilt toward Clinton and a decline for Trump. Add to that, Lichtman, and his much vaunted model which he claims has correctly predicted the outcome for 32 years is hedging his bet this year, although he won't call it that. Lichtman's model predicts a Trump win. Below are his hedges. 1) "It takes six keys to count the party in power out, and they have exactly six keys. And one key could still flip, as I recognized last time — the third party key, that requires Gary Johnson to get at least five percent of the popular vote. He could slip below that, which would shift the prediction." 2) "Donald Trump ... is broadly regarded as a history-shattering, precedent-making, dangerous candidate who could change the patterns of history .... I do think this election has the potential to shatter the normal boundaries of American politics and reset everything, including, perhaps, reset the keys to the White House." http://www.businessinsider.com/lichtman-predicts-trump-victory-with-caveats-2016-10 I have some problems with Lichtman's model in that his model is heavily based upon subjective questions. Whereas Moody's model is based 100% upon hard easily validated measures. The difference being Lichtman is an historian. The folks at Moody's are economists. Goldman Sachs issued a statement last evening. They think Clinton is twice as likely to win next week than Trump. Additionally, over 400 of the nation's top economists issued an open letter today warning the public of the danger a Trump presidency. People should take that warning seriously.
Russ_Watters: Can you fill me in on what crime(s) Hillary committed, please? That is, specifically, what law(s) did she break, and what's the standard prison time or other penalty imposed for breaching those laws? And, if you can, also fill me in on what elements need to be proved beyond reasonable doubt to establish those criminal offences. I'm not American. I am old enough to have been aware of Hillary Clinton at least from the time of Bill's presidency, and I know something of her personal history prior to that, too. Your disliking her doesn't make her a criminal. Hillary's private life and marriage, rather like Bills infidelities, should rightly be a private matter. But that's a different discussion. Maybe so. I'll wait for you to explain the crime(s) to me. Arrogance and self-centredness, while unattractive traits, are not in themselves crimes. If they were, Donald Trump would have gone to jail long ago. I think Watergate was a bit more serious than using the wrong email server. Realistically, you think that if Hillary loses this election you'll get any President other than Trump? If so, I think you're clinging to a false hope.
Yeah, breaking and entering, money laundering, obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence, and conspiracy are much more serious crimes than simply using the wrong email server.
Steve Benen↱ describes it as, "A Watergate comparison that finally makes sense", recalling, "The last time I counted, there were at least 10 separate 'controversies' that President Obama's critics eagerly labeled 'Obama's Watergate,' each of which turned out to be meaningless, further diluting an already over used cliché." He was at the time referring to an article from Franklin Foer↱, who wrote for Slate that, "The DNC Hack Is Watergate, but Worse": What's galling about the WikiLeaks dump is the way in which the organization has blurred the distinction between leaks and hacks. Leaks are an important tool of journalism and accountability. When an insider uncovers malfeasance, he brings information to the public in order to stop the wrongdoing. That's not what happened here. The better analogy for these hacks is Watergate. To help win an election, the Russians broke into the virtual headquarters of the Democratic Party. The hackers installed the cyber-version of the bugging equipment that Nixon's goons used—sitting on the DNC computers for a year, eavesdropping on everything, collecting as many scraps as possible. This is trespassing, it's thievery, it's a breathtaking transgression of privacy. It falls into that classic genre, the dirty trick. Yet that term feels too innocent to describe the offense. Nixon's dirty tricksters didn't mindlessly expose the private data of low-level staff. To the one, it seems worth mentioning, since Watergate has entered the conversation. To the other, I'm actually thinking of another discussion I've been taking part in, but Foer goes on to argue: We should be appalled at the public broadcast of this minutiae. It will have a chilling effect—campaign staffers will now assume they no longer have the space to communicate honestly. This honest communication—even if it's often trivial or dumb—is important for the process of arriving at sound strategy and sound ideas. (To be sure, the DNC shouldn't need privacy to know that attacking a man for his faith is just plain gross.) Open conversation, conducted with the expectation of privacy, is the necessary precondition for the formation of collective wisdom and consensus. If we eviscerate the possibility of privacy in politics, we increase the likelihood of poor decision-making. I noted in that other thread that the Clintons are very good at parsing an abstract line. They have done well enough to work within the system; the more substantive critique against the Clintons, which comes from their left flank, has to do with the results of working within the system. In the present moment, I think of the quarter-century campaign against Hillary Clinton's reputation; I think of the skill with which the Clintons have navigated insanely treacherous political waters under historically extraordinary circumstances―they are the benchmark by which we are recalibrating any number of our societal principles, unless, of course, we de-recalibrate after we finally nail the Clintons to a tree, which in truth is the most likely outcome if Republicans ever do succeed in governance by slander. But it raises an interesting question: What would the Clinton reputation be had we not asked them to perform such extraordinary feats of two-bit politicking? That is to say, if you raise enough fake controversies, the idea that they're fake would generally lose its efficacy if that was how the Clintons responded. As it is, those who might invoke terms like "Clinton machine" offer a reminding metaphor: They needed to calculate a different way through, and they have; indeed, the so-called Comey Surprise last week reminds of Hillary Clinton's skill―by standing the line and not triangulating within the GOP Devil's Triangulation, they appear to have successfully foiled the saboteur. It's hard to account for the audience, but that turn seemed one hell of a feat from a well-trained, exceedingly tested, steadfast, enduring, faithful, strong campaigner who has shown a quarter-century worth of stamina on the trail. Here's a fun question: If we put Issa or Gowdy in charge of a committee investigating Donald Trump, would they even need to lie when they leaked in order to spark scandal? Seriously, from all appearances, Hillary Clinton just brushed off an attack by the Director of the FBI. To the one, not many politicians could accomplish the same. To the other, not many politicians would have to, for not so many politicians would be subject to the kind of coprophiliac trebuchet sideshow Hillary Clinton has survived, and thus wouldn't have the opportunity to so devour Comey. And, besides, that was just too clumsy an attack; timing is everything―Comey blew his, and Clinton had no time like the present for skipping the ritual self-abasement and properly defending herself. Still, though, part of what annoys people about the Clintons is their polymerized calculations by which they slip through the GOP gotcha grasp. We ask them to defend themselves against this farce; they do so with extraordinary success; we resent them for defending themselves. Then again, it's Hillary Clinton, so what does anyone expect? Of course people are going to freak out. Quite frankly, I think she should make a highlight reel of that slanderous, libelous quarter-century, including the constant Republican fearmongering about her ambition, in order to make the point that she owes some portion of her electoral success to Republicans who kept her name recognition so damn high. In the end, Comey's wannabe October Surprise might have just faltered on Clinton fatigue, which, in turn, might itself be faltering because fatigue of the Clintons has itself become so fatiguing that people are now fatigued by fatigued and fatiguing efforts to wreck the Clintons. It's hard to figure what conservatives think they're doing, but President Hillary Clinton will probably owe them a shoutout from her inaugural dais, because she could not have achieved the White House without their help. No, really: If it wasn't Hillary Clinton, who would be our first female president, when would she arrive, and how would she win election? ____________________ Notes: Benen, Steve. "A Watergate comparison that finally makes sense". msnbc. 26 July 2016. msnbc.com. 2 November 2016. http://on.msnbc.com Foer, Franklin. "The DNC Hack Is Watergate, but Worse". Slate. 26 July 2016. Slate.com. 2 November 2016. http://slate.me/2aORgLT
The standard lefty take on that has always been: a moderate Republican, conservative and Protestant and well educated, who achieved prominence through her association with a high-status and well known husband, and demonstrated ability first in pro bono or charitable or emergency work in that context (the wife of a Congressman who died in office, say) - giving her achievements a motivation other than ambition, and a context not involving neglect of family. She would win the election based on recognition of her essential fitness, overcoming misogyny by having the good fortune to run against a somehow unusually disqualified opponent. Spot on, except the Democratic Party has moved so far to the right that she isn't a Republican.
Please reread, joe. It's 110 emails. The two emails was the lie that you remembered incorrectly. Not correct. The 110 emails contained information that was classified at the time sent. Not the same thing. You're just repeating Hillary's stream of lies she backed-off slowly as the truth was uncovered. Again: the emails were not marked as classified but they nevertheless contained classified information. Which begs the question: who improperly removed the classification markings? (answer: her staff, under her orders).
I notice you removed any mention there of classified information. So that is an acknowledgement that you were trying to improperly accuse Powell of mishandling classified information. Thanks. Still no. Say it clearly, if you really mean to. Here's some verbiage you can use. I, Icearua, acknowledge that Hillary Clinton broke the law by sending/receiving/housing classified information on her email server. That's false... and if you disagree, prove it.
Section 793(f) of the federal penal code (Title 18) http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/437479/fbi-rewrites-federal-law-let-hillary-hook Specifically, that is mishandling of classified information. And frankly, after two years it is hard to accept people claiming not to know this. I don't see the value here, given that I'm having such a hard time getting people to even acknowledge they recognize the crime. I'm not interested in taking it further unless you explicitly acknowledge you recognize it was a crime. One step at a time. I never claimed it did: her crime makes her a criminal. You were asking if that was the only reason I disliked her, not whether every other thing I dislike about her made her a criminal (obviously, not). Anything that is public knowledge fair game for forming opinions about politicians. And even certain things were private and off limits, Bill got his blowjob in the oval office, which is most decidedly not a private matter. I'm sure you are a working-age professional and would expect to be instantly fired if caught getting a blojob from an intern in your office. Again, I never claimed they were. I'm having a hard time understanding why you are being so passionate and, frankly, irrational about this when you don't have a dog in this show. I know the score, James, but that doesn't change that your characterization was false. You didn't say "realistically", you said "The alternative, of course, is Trump". If you wouldn't mind, I'd really like to know why you characterized it that way. Why did you choose to characterize it inaccurately instead of accurately?
Admittedly, no third party candidate has even a snowballs chance in hell of winning... primarily because party lines are so polarized. Maybe once all the Boomers et al die off (since that seems to be, at least in my admittedly limited experience) where the "straight party ticket with no idea who is actually on the ballot" voters seem to be. Then, we have to do away with the "I'm voting for X because I know that name!" group.
