[Discussion] What's Clinton Done?

This thread is intended to provide a central point for extended discussions of the Clintons, especially Hillary, and their past and present actions and the effects of those actions. Please use this instead of clogging up election and future political threads with derails. Accusations with evidence, and defenses with evidence, are welcome here, as well as reference articles and personal anecdotes.

NormanTheIntern wrote:

Fair enough - I think this comes down to a judgement call because he'd promised to tell Congress if anything new came up, and as I've said, I find it hard to believe he would have done this so publicly if he didn't already have some assurance that some of the mails were relevant.

Find it hard, Norman. Comey notified Congress on Friday, but the FBI didn't get a warrant to read the emails until Sunday. That means the only way he could have had any assurance that the emails were in anyway relevant is if FBI agents broke the law by reading Abedin's emails without a warrant.

[EDIT: Looking at farley's post about Giuliani knowing about the new emails weeks ago and multiple sources confirming that the FBI knew about the emails weeks before Comey felt the need to inform Congress *and* obtain a warrant to even begin to legally review those emails kinda makes it hard to argue to that Comey was being anything but partisan. OK, you could argue that Comey was simply an exceptionally poor executive who didn't know what his agents were doing for nearly a month. But either way it doesn't look good for him.]

Comey literally thought it was more important that he cover his ass and tell Congress that new Hillary emails might exist and that, potentially, they might even be related to the investigation instead of either following established protocol designed to keep the FBI an apolitical organization and not announce anything until after the election, or waiting until his agents could review the emails and see if there was actually actually relevant and showed evidence of wrongdoing.

In my book that is either poor judgement, which should result in him resigning because he thinks his job is more important than the sanctity of our democratic process, or him being blatantly partisan, which should result in his resigning (and being the target of a political corruption investigation).

NormanTheIntern wrote:

Well, life would be easier if we could all assign others' motivations to fit our preconceptions. Unfortunately, you'll find that I didn't actually throw a fit or call for a special prosecutor when Comey decided against charges. If he decides against charges this time, I'll accept that end result, too. I just want the investigation and decision to be fair and without the appearance of political influence - I don't see why this is a controversial position to hold.

Police chiefs don't decide who gets prosecuted and for what crimes. That's the responsibility (and power) of district attorneys.

The head of the FBI doesn't get to decide if Hillary gets charged with transmitting or storing classified information. That's the responsibility (and power) of the DoJ.

The DoJ didn't file any charges against Hillary over the summer because the FBI didn't find any evidence that would prove that Hillary had clear intent f*ck around with classified information. And the DoJ sh*tting on the FBI's investigation of the Clinton Foundation because it was based on bad--and exceptionally partisan--information.

So if you actually want investigations to be fair and without the appearance of political influence then you should be all for a special prosecutor to root through the FBI to expose agents who just feel the need to investigate Hillary and to extensively question Comey about why he found it necessary to grossly violate established protocols twice: once when he made his pontificating statement about how he didn't find any evidence of wrongdoing by Hillary, but still called her names and criticized her actions and the second time when he announced (non) information that he knew would f*ck with the election.

Demyx wrote:
ruhk wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

Still waiting for the armed liberal militias that threaten to spill blood in the streets if Trump is elected.

Our preferred form of violence is threatening to move to Canada.

Don't forget our most potent weapon, the strongly-worded thinkpiece.

Oh, and our weapon of mass destruction: the snarky meme.

Wikileaks is now pushing the modern version of blood libel, pronouncing that John Podesta and his brother are into drinking blood and other occult practices.

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status...

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepa...

An old New York Times articles talks about one of the desserts being a "core of dark chocolate ice cream is covered with meringue, decorated with gold leaf and a swirl of spun sugar, bedded on chocolate cookie crumbs and flambéed with rum" but strangely no mention of blood or semen.

Dimmerswitch wrote:

I don't think Norman has made a persuasive case about the appropriateness of Comey's public disclosures (or the differing standards evident in Comey's decision to not similarly disclose potential ties between Trump and Russia), but I do think it's clear Norman engaging in good faith here, and appreciate him doing so in longer-form, more-substantive manner.

Agreed.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Wikileaks is now pushing the modern version of blood libel, pronouncing that John Podesta and his brother are into drinking blood and other occult practices.

Kind of removes the doubt that they are more than just a neutral leak repository.

I had a neutral leak once. A few pills and it all cleared up.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Wikileaks is now pushing the modern version of blood libel, pronouncing that John Podesta and his brother are into drinking blood and other occult practices.

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status...

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepa...

An old New York Times articles talks about one of the desserts being a "core of dark chocolate ice cream is covered with meringue, decorated with gold leaf and a swirl of spun sugar, bedded on chocolate cookie crumbs and flambéed with rum" but strangely no mention of blood or semen.

The real Spirit Cooking with semen, etc., happens at the Bohemian Grove, duh.

FoxNews tries to walk back talk of imminent indictment, not that their viewers will care, I'm sure.

Robear wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

Wikileaks is now pushing the modern version of blood libel, pronouncing that John Podesta and his brother are into drinking blood and other occult practices.

Kind of removes the doubt that they are more than just a neutral leak repository.

No, Wikileaks using an r/The_Donald post about Hillary being involved in human trafficking as the basis for a tweet removes any doubt that it's just a neutral leak repository.

I forgot the /s. Sorry.

Dimmerswitch wrote:

I don't think Norman has made a persuasive case about the appropriateness of Comey's public disclosures (or the differing standards evident in Comey's decision to not similarly disclose potential ties between Trump and Russia), but I do think it's clear Norman engaging in good faith here, and appreciate him doing so in longer-form, more-substantive manner.

I like this, too. I'd like to encourage him to keep posting, even though I disagree strongly with much of it.

The "they're both the same" argument is probably where I diverge most sharply, Norman. From my perspective, one side is sticking a toe in the water, and the other side uses that to justify a full-body cannonball.

edit to add, after reading this page: Wow, Wikileaks isn't making itself look too good, is it?

Comey decides not to press charges again.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/9Rqqn3c.gif)

Comey now finds himself in the unenviable position of having both parties convinced that he's a partisan hack criminality liable for trying to influence the election. I hope he likes golf, because he's not keeping his job no matter who wins.

This sure feels like an, "oh sh*t, I could be criminally liable for election tampering based on last week's letter, I better toss one out that appeases the other party quick before election day" response to me...

Serengeti wrote:

This sure feels like an, "oh sh*t, I could be criminally liable for election tampering based on last week's letter, I better toss one out that appeases the other party quick before election day" response to me...

That doesn't make sense though, that would be throwing good money after bad and committing fraud again to cover up fraud. Granted, people do that all the time, but in this case that's like the worst possible choice. The much, much, much more logical situation is that there is simply no evidence of corruption or any crime being committed. He's not appeasing anyone by admitting the truth, he's just making his tampering much more obvious.

The problem with that GIF is that no law was actually broken. There has to be intent to disseminate classified material to non-cleared people for it to be illegal, and the FBI could find no evidence of that. (See point 4 in this Washington Post op-ed for more info about intent.)

For example, Edward Snowden clearly broke the law, because by his own admission, he intended to distribute classified material to members of the press.

But please, don't let the facts get in the way of funny spongebob memes. (If that sounds snarky it's because I now have no other response to made-up BS being paraded around as fact.)

Email stands for evil mail. All email is bad. Hilary sent email for days. Evil mail for days from BLM terrorist. Trump will lock her up and everyone else that sends evil mail. My mom just emailed me pictures of the remodel she did on her kitchen. How freaking evil is that? She known me all my life and thinks I care about her remodel. Lock her up with Clinton. Build a wall to keep all email out. I'm going evil mail my mom and tell her to stop emailing pictures of her kitchen and cats. Oh no, if I send a email that would make me a bad hombre. I'll be locked up with the nasty women.

Oh god please Hilary win and save me from being locked up with you and my mom.

They found that most of the emails on Weiner's laptop were duplicates of ones they had already investigated. That's not surprising -- they were just Huma Abedin's copies of emails that Clinton sent. If they weren't criminal in July they wouldn't be criminal now.

It is pretty telling that Comey milked it for a full week before slipping his crap in on a Sunday night in the hopes that it would quietly be drowned out by football scores. The fact of the matter is that all of those emails could have been reviewed in minutes using keyword searches and Bayesian analyses, but he wanted to make sure that it dominated the news cycle the week before the election.

The Hatch Act awaits him.

I doubt the majority of them were even "analyzed" and were simply deduped and reduced down to the few (if any) that they didn't already have. One of the things about email is that it involves multiple people, so it would be pretty amazing for anyone to have a significant amount of emails they didn't already have from previous sources.

Paleocon wrote:

The Hatch Act awaits him.

Yeah, well it would have to happen before Inauguration Day, 'cause if it comes up during Clinton's watch, it will read as petty retribution.

Can we have one last post that simply says, "Nothing criminal for the last 30 years but she's tried to do a hell of a lot of good" and lock this thread?

As much fun as it's been arguing via proxy with r/the_donald or seeing those dank memes, this thread and to a lesser extent, its trumpian counterpart have done us all a disservice.

We've aided the pervasive discussion in the country that plans and ability don't matter, what matters is whatever can be thrown and stick to your opponent. What matters is that you capture the media cycle with lies.

Because the scandals come fast and frequent with Trump, that thread makes sense to me. But this one? It never even got past emails. It didn't even get to Benghazi, which surprises me.

How anyone is even engaging on the topic of emails any longer is beyond me.

In some ways, the purpose was to move the toxic discussion that was going to happen anyway into it's own little septic tank.

oilypenguin wrote:

Can we have one last post that simply says, "Nothing criminal for the last 30 years but she's tried to do a hell of a lot of good" and lock this thread?

Watching Full Frontal last night was a nice way to cap the campaign season.

That said, we plan on watching Colbrt's election special on Showtime tonight.

I also suspect that both this and Trump's threads will have relevance after today.

The big reveal in the Weiner laptop emails.

IMAGE(https://scontent-sjc2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-0/s480x480/14925663_1148566761901002_5282099764246487871_n.jpg?oh=c33b7e0110001663907ada39daad046d&oe=58C833E4)

Paleocon wrote:

The big reveal in the Weiner laptop emails.

IMAGE(https://scontent-sjc2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-0/s480x480/14925663_1148566761901002_5282099764246487871_n.jpg?oh=c33b7e0110001663907ada39daad046d&oe=58C833E4)

OMG! The concerns about her health were RIGHT! They've found the smoking brulee!!!

If we don't stand against burnt sugar now...

Paleocon wrote:

The big reveal in the Weiner laptop emails.

IMAGE(https://scontent-sjc2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-0/s480x480/14925663_1148566761901002_5282099764246487871_n.jpg?oh=c33b7e0110001663907ada39daad046d&oe=58C833E4)

So Hillary is in the pocket of big dessert!!!