The New American Politics thread

[Gozer]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

Jill Stein?

I meant The Donald.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Well now this should more or less cause a total revolt among his supporters. First, he's grifting out in the open, not even hiding it. Balsy and arrogant to be sure, but I suppose in a backwards way open and honest too.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b03d51368a82b9

And oh look, he's going to....continue Obama's immigration policies, but with more energy!!!. No 11 million deportation, and surely deep down Trump supporters know this is the first step towards the wall not happening either. Ann Coulter might be on suicide watch

After spending a few days reflecting on his immigration stances and consulting with Hispanic supporters, Donald Trump on Monday detailed how he would deal with the millions of immigrants illegally living in the United States: Enforce laws that are already on the books and continue to do what President Obama is doing, although "perhaps with a lot more energy."

This strategy marks a sudden change for the Republican nominee, who has presented himself as a politically incorrect outsider who is not afraid to take extreme measures to combat illegal immigration, such as deporting 11 million people or constructing a massive wall along the Southern border. For more than a year, Trump insisted that all illegal immigrants "have got to go" and that he would create a "deportation force" to carry out the task.

Trump struck a starkly different tone during an interview with Bill O'Reilly that aired on Fox News on Monday night. Trump said he would separate the country's undocumented immigrants into two groups: The "bad ones" who would be kicked out of the country as soon as he takes office and "everybody else" who would go through the same process that the Obama Administration is currently using.

"As far as everybody else, we're going to go through the process," Trump said. "What people don't know is that Obama got tremendous numbers of people out of the country. Bush, the same thing. Lots of people were brought out of the country with the existing laws. Well, I'm going to do the same thing."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ergy/#comments

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by Gozer

She has clearly violated the Federal Records Act, and likely several other felonies including perjury.

How so? What exactly was the violation of the Federal Records Act?

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Gozer

http://thehill.com/policy/national-s...al-records-act

They won't even apply the standard of "wouldn't get a conviction" to the Federal Records Act - which Secretary Clinton nakedly violated.

John Dean is an independent (not Republican or Democrat) lawyer very intimately knowledgeable about these charges. In fact, he was involved in Watergate with Nixon and dealt with the laws for a decade:

"Endless efforts by congressional Republicans to foil or foul up Hillary Clinton’s run for the presidency have hit a new low. The members of Congress involved cannot be sued for defamation, since they are protected by the “Speech and Debate Clause” of the Constitution, but the fact that they are not merely smearing the former secretary of state but are trying to send her to jail on phony charges of perjury and lying to Congress is beyond the pale of dirty politics. It is an abuse of power and their effort to criminalize politics could one-day blowback on them and result in their going to jail on bogus charges. They are employing a tactic that could undermine democracy, so it is appropriate to get the facts out."


https://verdict.justia.com/2016/08/1...illary-clinton

When the Republican lead investigator himself says no reasonable prosecutor would charge her with anything, that means something.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Exactly. The Republicans have been hurling feces at the Clintons for the better part of four decades and nothing has stuck. This has become a joke, especially to those with knowledge of the laws and clauses they've been attempting to use. Seriously, the Federal Records Act claim is the cherry on top of a turd sundae.

[CaramonLS]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

There is no chance she committed perjury or any other felonies.

You need more than someone's hottakery on this to call it that

Link

I made a post about this earlier in the thread.

If you want to debate it, go ahead, but there is a very strong case to be made for her lying congress during the Benghazi hearings about her emails. Throwing your arms up in the air and saying "this is malarkey" doesn't quite cut it.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by CaramonLS

Link

I made a post about this earlier in the thread.

If you want to debate it, go ahead, but there is a very strong case to be made for her lying congress during the Benghazi hearings about her emails. Throwing your arms up in the air and saying "this is malarkey" doesn't quite cut it.

You need to read more of the deposition. Hillary didn't lie at all. Three of 60,000 emails contained classified information. None were marked classified at the time. She stated she never sent any emails marked classified.

I posted a rebuttal much stronger than "malarkey" above. The whole perjury thing is partisan politicking. Nothing more

[Itse]

Let's examine what are the actual facts in that piece.

If you are a large donator to the Clinton foundation, by contacting a co-founder of the Clinton foundation Doug Band you might get your email forwarded to Huma Abedin, Clintons chief-of-staff at the White House. No information if even this is guaranteed, but let's just consider this for a second. Should a person who works for the Clinton foundation refuse to do this? I don't think so. Part of Doug Bands job is to keep the donators to that foundation happy.

We also get a quote of a discussion between Band and Abedin.

“Makes me nervous to get involved but I’ll ask,” Abedin wrote to Band in May 2009 after he forwarded to her an email from Wasserman.

Band responded: “then dont.”

I am at a loss as to why are they quoting that here, because all this quote does is cut the legs from under their story.

They are quoting a conversation where Clintons closest aid is showing hesitation at helping a millionaire donor, and a person working at the Clinton foundation doing the literal opposite of helping their donators get their requests through to Clinton. So not only is donation of millions of dollars to Clinton foundation NOT guaranteed to get you access to Clinton, it might not even get your request for access all the way to Clinton herself. (Or at least that's the clear implication of that quote.)

I wonder how common that is? That donating millions of dollars to a charity might not even get you a meeting with one of the heads of that charity?

We are also told that a superfamous millionaire rockstar who is "a regular at foundation events" got "dismissive" responses to his requests.

From the material in that article you'd have a better case to suggest that Hillary Clinton does not care to keep up contacts with major donators to her very own charity.


There are two examples on who Clinton does meet. One is Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, who is heir apparent to the throne of Bahrain, a deputy commander in the Bahrain defense force and a deputy prime minister of Bahrain. Bahrain is a US ally in the Middle-East. Refusing to meet with people like these might actually have gotten her fired.

The other person is S. Daniel Abraham, one of the richest people in America and "a major Democratic donor". So a major democratic politician meets with a major democratic donor. Oo, shocking news!

When I read the quotes and facts from that article, the biggest question it leaves me is why does it go to such lengths to provide so much evidence that there is nothing to see here? This is the Washington Post, a media mostly known for building mountains out of molehills in their relentless anti-Clinton campaign.

The only reason I can think of is that the journalists who wrote this piece are actually good journalists given a dirty job, and they tried to make the best of it. If I was a US voter, that article would make it much easier for me to vote for Hillary Clinton.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by CaramonLS

Link

I made a post about this earlier in the thread.

If you want to debate it, go ahead, but there is a very strong case to be made for her lying congress during the Benghazi hearings about her emails. Throwing your arms up in the air and saying "this is malarkey" doesn't quite cut it.

Okay, so why are the Republicans not reacting to this "very strong case"?

[corporatejay]

Originally Posted by Itse

Let's examine what are the actual facts in that piece.

If you are a large donator to the Clinton foundation, by contacting a co-founder of the Clinton foundation Doug Band you might get your email forwarded to Huma Abedin, Clintons chief-of-staff at the White House. No information if even this is guaranteed, but let's just consider this for a second. Should a person who works for the Clinton foundation refuse to do this? I don't think so. Part of Doug Bands job is to keep the donators to that foundation happy.

We also get a quote of a discussion between Band and Abedin.



I am at a loss as to why are they quoting that here, because all this quote does is cut the legs from under their story.

They are quoting a conversation where Clintons closest aid is showing hesitation at helping a millionaire donor, and a person working at the Clinton foundation doing the literal opposite of helping their donators get their requests through to Clinton. So not only is donation of millions of dollars to Clinton foundation NOT guaranteed to get you access to Clinton, it might not even get your request for access all the way to Clinton herself. (Or at least that's the clear implication of that quote.)

I wonder how common that is? That donating millions of dollars to a charity might not even get you a meeting with one of the heads of that charity?

We are also told that a superfamous millionaire rockstar who is "a regular at foundation events" got "dismissive" responses to his requests.

From the material in that article you'd have a better case to suggest that Hillary Clinton does not care to keep up contacts with major donators to her very own charity.


There are two examples on who Clinton does meet. One is Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, who is heir apparent to the throne of Bahrain, a deputy commander in the Bahrain defense force and a deputy prime minister of Bahrain. Bahrain is a US ally in the Middle-East. Refusing to meet with people like these might actually have gotten her fired.

The other person is S. Daniel Abraham, one of the richest people in America and "a major Democratic donor". So a major democratic politician meets with a major democratic donor. Oo, shocking news!

When I read the quotes and facts from that article, the biggest question it leaves me is why does it go to such lengths to provide so much evidence that there is nothing to see here? This is the Washington Post, a media mostly known for building mountains out of molehills in their relentless anti-Clinton campaign.

The only reason I can think of is that the journalists who wrote this piece are actually good journalists given a dirty job, and they tried to make the best of it. If I was a US voter, that article would make it much easier for me to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Washington Post is a very good newspaper with a slight editorial bias. I think you're bang on. They have to report on it, and there is nothing they said in that piece that is "untrue" it's just editorialized to sound more scandalous than it is.

[CaramonLS]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

You need to read more of the deposition. Hillary didn't lie at all. Three of 60,000 emails contained classified information. None were marked classified at the time. She stated she never sent any emails marked classified.

I posted a rebuttal much stronger than "malarkey" above. The whole perjury thing is partisan politicking. Nothing more

If you actually clicked my link, you would see what Politifact and Comey say to that assertion.

But Comey reported that, of the tens of thousands of emails investigators reviewed, 113 individual emails contained classified information, and three of them bore markings signifying their classification status. (Information can still be classified even if it does not have a label.) Eight email threads contained top-secret information, the highest level of classification, 36 contained secret information, and the remaining eight contained confidential information.

[Fozzie_DeBear]

Originally Posted by Gozer

Having two President Clintons from the same marriage becomes awkward. It's also consistent with Bernie and The Donald, whom I'm also on a first-name basis with.

Also, since a marriage is legally a single entity, I'd like to see some scrutiny under the 22nd amendment (term limits).

I'm sure you were at least a little bothered by the Bushes and their dynasty? Right? Right?

[Fozzie_DeBear]

Originally Posted by Gozer

She has clearly violated the Federal Records Act, and likely several other felonies including perjury. She's not evil or villainous, but criminal seems accurate to me.

It's like when a superstar in the NHL doesn't get penalized to the same extent as an career-AHL-plug for the same infraction. Understandable and defensible, but not exactly innocent.

If only there was a Federal Bureau to Investigate such transgressions and determine their criminality....oh well

[Itse]

Originally Posted by corporatejay

Washington Post is a very good newspaper with a slight editorial bias.

I wouldn't call that bias "slight", and I would never call a newspaper that publishes articles which have such biased writing styles "very good".

But there are clearly proper journalists working there, which these days is far from guaranteed. They're far, far from the worst.

And it's not like they let Trump off the hook either, such as here.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poste...=.786942b99bbb

Trump fits Frankfurt’s definition of a B.S. artist to a T. And, it should be noted, this also means that he occasionally tells the truth by accident. But the notion put forward by his supporters that Trump is daring to speak hard truths is laughable, since Trump has no clue what is true and what isn’t.

(Btw I love that quote. "he occasionally tells the truth by accident." Gold.)

Trump is a mediocre B.S. artist on a stage that is way too big for his meager abilities.

[CaramonLS]

Originally Posted by Fozzie_DeBear

If only there was a Federal Bureau to Investigate such transgressions and determine their criminality....oh well

Apparently the FBI needed a recommendation in order to investigate that. Link

[peter12]

Itse, you have actually provided very good context for the accusation that the interests of the Democratic Party are so interwined with those of the Clinton Foundation so as to be unmistakebly corrupt.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by CaramonLS

If you actually clicked my link, you would see what Politifact and Comey say to that assertion.

And if you clicked mine you'd see why that's still not relevant.

She sent three emails with partial markings that she did not know were classified. Comey himself said she didn't know. If you read the source material or what I posted you'll see how this perjury will not progress and wouldn't even be a point of discussion. I don't think you understand what is required for perjury.

This does not meet the criteria for perjury

Incompetence? Maybe. Perjury? Nope

[CaramonLS]

Originally Posted by Itse

Okay, so why are the Republicans not reacting to this "very strong case"?

Here is an article from Fox news last week about it. They seem to still be talking about it? Only some news sources appear to still be interested in covering it. Link

[Itse]

Originally Posted by peter12

Itse, you have actually provided very good context for the accusation that the interests of the Democratic Party are so interwined with those of the Clinton Foundation so as to be unmistakebly corrupt.

Please do explain.

[Gozer]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

None were marked classified at the time

That is irrelevant. A document does not need to me marked to be considered (and treated like it's) classified. The content dictates whether or not it's classified.

If a high-ranking official of the government is exclusively communicating via non-secure channels, then she is negligent to the duty of protecting sensitive information.
Comey indicated that she was 'extremely reckless' but not 'gross negligence' which is hardly an exoneration.

As for the insinuations of a quid-pro-quo, we can only review emails, not phone calls or other methods of communication - which could reasonably be expected to have been used for this exact reason. There needs to be inference and common sense injected, in the court of public opinion.

As for the clarification of the Federal Records Act. Communications from government employees (on official channels - Hillary only used one email address, therefore it must be her official channel)..these communications are property of the State.
The intent, to me, is clear. She didn't want FOIA requests or congressional review of her activities to arise during her Presedential candidacy. That's a reasonable concern (since Congressional Republicans really are trying to bring her down) but it's evasion of the spirit and the letter of the law with the (correct) assumption that she is above the law.