US Elections - The white power-suit vs the white-power suit

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

9 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

 

Also, Maria Bartiromo's cleavage was in the frame pretty much the entire time. My wife remarked on how marvelous it was.

 

She clearly won the night. And your wife has great taste. 

[Ariadne23]

7 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

She clearly won the night. And your wife has great taste. 

I'm sure Billy Bush would be happy to throw his two cents into this conversation about what this female journalist was wearing at work? I hear he's not real busy.

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

5 minutes ago, Ariadne23 said:

I'm sure Billy Bush would be happy to throw his two cents into this conversation about what this female journalist was wearing at work? I hear he's not real busy.

Nothing wrong with a little admiration. It's like noting that Rodney Harrison's two sizes two small jackets really accentuate his biceps.

[mormont]

4 minutes ago, White Walker Texas Ranger said:

Nothing wrong with a little admiration. It's like noting that Rodney Harrison's two sizes two small jackets really accentuate his biceps.

It's not particularly relevant or necessary, so yeah, let's end that discussion please.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

 Weird Al-Bad Hombres, Nasty Women

 

 

[Ariadne23]

16 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

 Weird Al-Bad Hombres, Nasty Women

Freaking. Amazing. Thanks for that.

[Ormond]

3 hours ago, Ariadne23 said:

It's more like 16 by my last count. Every outlet seems to report a different number, like they're making different judgments about which accusers are believable enough to report. Don't like that much.

Isn't part of the difference here whether the accusations were publicly made before or after the release of the Access Hollywood tape? I think the lower figures come from only counting women who've come forward since that moment.

[Kalbear]

Okay, pessimism story part 2: emails.

What would happen if the email server ended up being hacked and it was released now? Or like in 10 days?

Would it change your mind?

 

For me I think it might. The problem is that at that point it would be clear that Clinton practiced gross negligence and thus violated the espionage act. The choice of having her as a known criminal as president is not good. Kaine would likely be potus and would have zero mandate. 

It'd also make a lot more sense about why trump has refused to accept the Intel offered. If he is being told that putin does have his back and will fix it - and more importantly just focus on putting her in jail and how she shouldn't be eligible to even run - his bizarre behaviors suddenly become significantly more rational.

[OldGimletEye]

http://time.com/4537566/donald-trump-republican-party-survival/

Michael Steel begins the delusional excuses for Donald Trump. Said delusions include, "hey man, don't blame us! Trump wasn't a real conservative or a real Republican. Yada, yada, yada!. Trump was just an random thing that happened. We have no idea how he took over our party."

Keep dreamin Michael Steel. Just keep on believen' that the Republican Party is largely driven by so called "principled conservatives." and that Trump was just some random aberration.

[Ariadne23]

5 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Isn't part of the difference here whether the accusations were publicly made before or after the release of the Access Hollywood tape? I think the lower figures come from only counting women who've come forward since that moment.

Then it would be, I think, 14.

[maarsen]

48 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Okay, pessimism story part 2: emails.

What would happen if the email server ended up being hacked and it was released now? Or like in 10 days?

Would it change your mind?

 

For me I think it might. The problem is that at that point it would be clear that Clinton practiced gross negligence and thus violated the espionage act. The choice of having her as a known criminal as president is not good. Kaine would likely be potus and would have zero mandate. 

It'd also make a lot more sense about why trump has refused to accept the Intel offered. If he is being told that putin does have his back and will fix it - and more importantly just focus on putting her in jail and how she shouldn't be eligible to even run - his bizarre behaviors suddenly become significantly more rational.

Let us say that the sexual assault charges against Trump hold up, and his fake charity payments get him in trouble, and the IRS audit shows him having tax fraud issues, why we could have a criminal elected as US president.   

[Kalbear]

5 minutes ago, maarsen said:

Let us say that the sexual assault charges against Trump hold up, and his fake charity payments get him in trouble, and the IRS audit shows him having tax fraud issues, why we could have a criminal elected as US president.   

Yep, either way. And I guess in that case my choice would still be Clinton, because Kaine is better than Pence. 

I think, however, it would be a major blow to US power and cause chaos for years. The GOP would already be massively dysfunctional - it would cause the Democrats to split fairly heavily too, and the former standard power groupings would essentially be done. The Clintons and Obama would both be heavily tainted, and even Sanders would be hurt. The actual term would result in full-on deadlock, as the chaos of early voting before the reveal combined with just shitty news would result in a fairly tainted election, similar to Brexit's regrets afterwards. 

And for the next 4 years, America would likely do basically nothing unless it was emergent. Republicans could legitimately state that Kaine has no standing to appoint justices as he wasn't actually elected, and they'd have something of a point. American interventionism would likely be curtailed except in the most dire of situations, and likely would allow Russia to be fairly adventurous. 

Even more amusingly, the same intelligence sources that Obama has been using to show proof that the Russians hacked would be used as proof to show that the Clinton servers were hacked by Russia too - giving that legitimacy and undeniability that wasn't there before. if Wikileaks got a hold of them chances are good that everyone would immediately assume they were procured by a Russian hack too. 

[OldGimletEye]

Josh Barro on leaving the Republican Party:

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-i-left-republican-party-register-democrat-2016-10

Quote

But what this election has made clear is that policy is not the most important problem with the Republican Party.

 

Quote

The Republican Party had a fundamental vulnerability: Because of the fact-free environment so many of its voters live in, and because of the anti-Democrat hysteria that had been willfully whipped up by so many of its politicians, it was possible for the party to be taken over by a fascist promising revenge.

 

[maarsen]

As stated before on this board, State Dept. emails have already been hacked. Unless Hillary has a habit of sending emails to herself, any email she sent to her work would already be out there. Going after her private server is like not only locking the barn door  after the horse got out but then burning the barn down. 

As for an unelected VP,  remember Gerald Ford? First Agnew resigns  for purportedly taking bribes,  and then Nixon resigns before being impeached for criminal acts. This is a useful precedent,  especially with the bit about Republican criminality engendering the whole sorry mess.

[James Arryn]

Awesome title.

[Ice Queen]

2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Okay, pessimism story part 2: emails.

What would happen if the email server ended up being hacked and it was released now? Or like in 10 days?

Would it change your mind?

No. Trump cannot be allowed to become President. Period. 

[Kalbear]

50 minutes ago, maarsen said:

As stated before on this board, State Dept. emails have already been hacked. Unless Hillary has a habit of sending emails to herself, any email she sent to her work would already be out there. Going after her private server is like not only locking the barn door  after the horse got out but then burning the barn down. 

But not necessarily by Russians, and they haven't been revealed. The point isn't that SoS mails were released and revealed - it's that her server was hacked by Russians, and she had no knowledge of it, and they've had that data (including any classified/TS data) on it. 

Which would almost certainly trigger the gross neglect clause of the Espionage Act.

50 minutes ago, maarsen said:

As for an unelected VP,  remember Gerald Ford? First Agnew resigns  for purportedly taking bribes,  and then Nixon resigns before being impeached for criminal acts. This is a useful precedent,  especially with the bit about Republican criminality engendering the whole sorry mess.

Except all of that happened after Nixon was fairly elected. 

[Jace, Extat]

5 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

I hope Trump gets less than 40%. There's something wrong about him getting more support than fundamentally decent people like Barry Goldwater (38.5%), George McGovern (37.5%), or Walter Mondale (40.6%).

Since when was Barry Goddamn Goldwater fundamentally decent?

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Yep, either way. And I guess in that case my choice would still be Clinton, because Kaine is better than Pence. 

I think, however, it would be a major blow to US power and cause chaos for years. The GOP would already be massively dysfunctional - it would cause the Democrats to split fairly heavily too, and the former standard power groupings would essentially be done. The Clintons and Obama would both be heavily tainted, and even Sanders would be hurt. The actual term would result in full-on deadlock, as the chaos of early voting before the reveal combined with just shitty news would result in a fairly tainted election, similar to Brexit's regrets afterwards. 

And for the next 4 years, America would likely do basically nothing unless it was emergent. Republicans could legitimately state that Kaine has no standing to appoint justices as he wasn't actually elected, and they'd have something of a point. American interventionism would likely be curtailed except in the most dire of situations, and likely would allow Russia to be fairly adventurous. 

Even more amusingly, the same intelligence sources that Obama has been using to show proof that the Russians hacked would be used as proof to show that the Clinton servers were hacked by Russia too - giving that legitimacy and undeniability that wasn't there before. if Wikileaks got a hold of them chances are good that everyone would immediately assume they were procured by a Russian hack too. 

I think they have nothing. The FBI and State Department have been going over the emails with a fine tooth comb, if there was anything in there that would ruin her we would have seen some sign by now. 

[Kalbear]

8 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

I think they have nothing. The FBI and State Department have been going over the emails with a fine tooth comb, if there was anything in there that would ruin her we would have seen some sign by now. 

Again, it doesn't matter what is in the emails. That's not the point. 

The point is that if Russia hacked the email server it shows that the server was, indeed, vulnerable and that Russia has had classified and TS information. The Espionage Act says that you either have to had been deliberately trying to circumvent security policies to release information (something that was clear in the Petraeus case, for instance) or you have to have been grossly neglectful in duties that resulted in information being leaked.

Here's the specific text:

Quote

 

(f)Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

 

The gross negligence part is really difficult to prove most of the time (and I believe only one case did they even think to bring it up, in 2003). There was a lot of talk about the data being removed because it was on the private email server, but that was pretty ignored.

But if it's actually in the hands of the Russians?

[Zorral]

I didn't see the dinner roast last night -- way too tired, though we did watch the so-called debate / Orange Stalin's debacle of the night before that.  So this morning I cruised through the media's round-ups and coverage of last night.  This in Slate is about the most complete description I at least have seen.  None of the other sites have mentioned what he describes at the end of Hillary's presentation:

 

Quote

 

But the highlight of Clinton’s address wasn’t actually her jokes. It was her impassioned peroration, which effortlessly tied Smith’s legacy to the very modern troubles that have dominated this campaign season. Clinton used this portion of her address to deliver as clear a thesis statement about her personal and political philosophy as we can ever expect to get. “In the end,” she said, “what makes this dinner important are not the jokes we tell but the legacy that we carry forward. It is often easy to forget how far this country has come.”

And there are a lot of people in this room tonight who themselves, or their parents or grandparents, came here as immigrants, made a life for yourselves, took advantage of the American dream and the greatest system that has ever been created in the history of the world to unleash the individual talents and energy and ambition of everyone willing to work hard.

And when I think about what Al Smith went through it’s important to just reflect how groundbreaking it was for him, a Catholic, to be my party’s nominee for president. Don’t forget—school boards sent home letters with children saying that if Al Smith is elected president, you will not be allowed to have or read a Bible. Voters were told that he would annul Protestant marriages. And … people even claimed the Holland Tunnel was a secret passageway to connect Rome and America, to help the pope rule our country.

Those appeals, appeals to fear and division, can cause us to treat each other as the other. Rhetoric like that makes it harder for us to see each other, to respect each other, to listen to each other. And certainly a lot harder to love our neighbor as ourselves.

I believe how we treat others is the highest expression of faith and of service. I’m not Catholic. I’m a Methodist, but one of the things that we share is the belief that in order to achieve salvation we need both faith and good works. And you certainly don’t need to be Catholic to be inspired by the humility and heart of the Holy Father, Pope Francis. Or to embrace his message. His message about rejecting a mindset of hostility, his calls to reduce inequality, his warnings about climate change, his appeal that we build bridges, not walls.

By then, Clinton looked serious, engaged—stepping out of the role of court jester and into the position of a bona fide moral leader.

Now as you may know, my running mate, Tim, is Catholic and went to Jesuit schools, and one of the things he and I have talked about is this idea from the Jesuits of the Magis, the more, the better. But we need to get better at finding ways to disagree on matters of policy while agreeing on questions of decency and civility. How we talk to each other, treat each other, respect each other.

So I’ve taken this concept of Magis to heart in this campaign, as best as one can in the daily heat, the back and forth of a presidential campaign, to ask how we can do more for each other, and better for each other. Because I believe that for each of us, our greatest monument on this earth won’t be what we build, but the lives we touch.

At this point, the audience seemed to understand what Clinton was doing, providing her with a nearly rapturous applause. It was extraordinarily moving to see a room full of mostly old, white, conservative men cheer a liberal woman’s implicit rejection of Trump’s cold-hearted message of exclusion and instead endorse inclusion, empathy—and, yes, love and kindness. Despite her initially tepid reception, Clinton must have been pleased as she walked off the dais. After decades of camouflage and reinvention, a person who seems a lot like the true Hillary Clinton emerged this week with striking clarity. And that, with any luck, is the person whom we will soon elect to be president of the United States.