Forget about “understanding” or “reaching out” to Trump voters. Their concerns are largely delusional, their “solutions” are diabolical and their preferences are vile.
But they’re only 20% of the country.
The people you need to reach are the non-voters. They aren’t staying home because they’re vicious shits who hate foreigners, they’re staying home because the American electoral and political systems are grotesquely corrupt.
Q: why was Citizens United bad?
A: because the unrestricted flow of money into politics is blatantly and severely corrupting.
The effects of Citizens United aren’t a thing that is going to happen. They’re a thing that has happened. And, as predicted, it utterly corrupted both parties.
That’s what needs fixing. You will always have a minority of citizens who are bigoted shits; every country does. The key is to build the system so that they don’t take control.
Sure, she was sometimes sloppy/lazy, though the main problem behavior was sending a handful of emails where there was classified information via a personal account to State employees .gov addresses where she may or may not have been aware of the issues with that. She didn’t really have any idea how document retention in email worked, which isn’t surprising. So it’s more akin to a very very busy employee sometimes (though very rarely) accidentally passing a mail with classified information with the wrong return address/envelope. It’s a problem. There are good reasons for the rules. Ignorance isn’t an excuse. But ignorance is a mitigating factor for the moral seriousness of the issue, and so far as things I disapprove of Clinton for (and there are a bunch) the email thing’s not even one that comes to mind. The FBI didn’t press charges, I don’t know why, but I wouldn’t assume Comey, who egregiously ratfucked Clinton, would have be going easy on Clinton if he actually had something serious to work with.
It’s also something where Gen. Flynn engaged in a very similar case of the same behavior, except he was passing classified info to foreign military and gov’t employees, and where when it was investigated he too had no charges pressed. Flynn was Trump’s advisor throughout the campaign and is now Trump’s pick for National Security Advisor. There was no front page articles on the Times about Flynn’s email scandal. There was no scandal to note.
Well I wasn’t happy about that “email stuff” either. I wasn’t trying to dismiss what she did as right or proper. It was deemed “not criminal” though and it didn’t stop me from voting for her. I’ve said before I’ve seen people fired – well respected well liked people – for lesser offenses.
I’m not going to go into the particulars, but I don’t disagree with you, aside from the fact that maybe people who can’t understand such things shouldn’t get access.
A monger means a seller or merchant. Usually loud. Like the guys at Pike Place Market. A warmonger is someone working hard to sell war to congress and the country. Warmongerdom is being in the “kingdom” or classification of people who are warmongers.
No, no, I think an ongerdom is a small fluffy animal, a bit like a ferret but with less claws. They have a very fast metabolism, so people keep them in their sleeves to keep warm. They’re always warm.
Or possibly a small vegetarian pasty from the Scilly Isles. That tastes much better warm.
Yes, that’s it. Very similar to a tribble. That’s why it’s important to only keep one in each sleeve. So is it that, or the pasty, or have I got this completely wrong?
For heaven’s sake, it wasn’t the wrong email client. It was a personal server storing work emails. Wrong on so many levels. It hurts the argument to claim she was just somehow using the wrong client, or account. Still better than Trump, but if the Democrats don’t get their heads around the fact that this kind of thing isn’t ok, they’re gonna lose next time, too.
There are very few valid responses to the email controversy:
The legal system worked as intended and one of the largest and most well funded investigations into violations of national security worked as intended and Hillary Clinton did not violate the law above the burden of proof.
That the Clinton machine was too big to fail Oh wait, it failed and the only ones saying is wasn’t are still talking about the election being rigged in her favor.
That there is a widespread conspiracy of corruption and collusion in the federal government and that Comey was over a proverbial barrel and did his best.
The private email server was probably established in an attempt to evade FOIA. Acting to subvert FOIA should be illegal.
The private-server trick has been used by many other American politicians. This does not make it right; it’s just another sign of the above-the-law attitude and reality of the American ruling class.
Running your office and personal comms through an off-the-books server set up and maintained by non-specialist admins is an obviously stupid thing to do if your work is focussed on national security. Classified or not, the office comms of the Sec State are an intelligence goldmine.
Comey is a partisan arse who disgraced his office in an active attempt to bias the election, and probably played a significant role in handing control of the world’s most bloated military to an ignorant narcissistic fascist.
Plenty of people outside the Clinton camp noted during the primary that the fact that the FBI Director was a Republican was a risk factor if Clinton was the candidate.
None of the above suggests that Clinton was involved in any grand conspiracy or unprecedented misconduct, or that Clinton would not have been a vastly preferable President to Trump. But, unlike Pizzagate or Benghazi, there were genuine grounds to criticise Clinton’s conduct in the email affair (although, of course, those aren’t the critique that the GOP chose to run with).
As bad as Trump? Hell no. As good as it should have been? Also no.
You know…I’ve had arguments with Trump supporters who kept asking me why he couldn’t possibly in my mind be a good/great president. I would always fallback and point out to them that a president no matter anything else must be a good leader. They would of course counter that he has lead his businesses and financial empire to success. I would then counter that it is different, because in business success can come despite good leadership.
This illustrates why he is a terrible choice to be the leader of the free world. Mr. P.E…you don’t reload your weapon and scream at everyone else holding weapons “I’ll put mine down after you all put yours down” NO. You lead. You say “I have the biggest weapon, and I will put mine down, everyone else needs to follow suit”
I’m starting to feel a grudging admiration for Trump’s Twitter skills. It can’t be easy cramming two contradictory ideas (even more nukes/let’s all be sensible about nukes) into 140 characters while making it appear as a single coherent thought.
So now that it seems Trump has decided to rely on Twitter for all of his diplomacy what happens when his account gets hacked by some 4channer who starts using it to destabilize the world or insult – Hey. Wait a minute…could that explain…?
