Clinton Campaign: Russia Leaked Emails to Help Trump (washingtonpost.com)

Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 10:39 · Score: 5, Insightful

Seems like Hillary could have avoided all this by associating with non-corrupt people. Including herself.

Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by MillionthMonkey · 2016-07-24 11:41 · Score: 5, Insightful

I can't believe they're using "our emails were hacked by Russians" as their excuse.

I mean, when you're in a hole, stop digging!
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by prisoner-of-enigma · 2016-07-24 11:49 · Score: 5, Funny

It's a vast left-wing conspiracy!

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Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Applehu+Akbar · 2016-07-24 13:24 · Score: 4, Funny

I can't believe they're using "our emails were hacked by Russians" as their excuse.
Next we'll be hearing that Trump is organizing all those shootings and bombings across Europe to boost his campaign. That's gotta be really expensive.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Crashmarik · 2016-07-24 13:40 · Score: 1

Well, this isn't enough for me to sit by and watch the Paris climate agreement get crumpled up by Cheeto Jesus. I'm voting for her but I still fucking hate her.
Oh that's funny. That climate accord will just be another cash cow for her if she gets in office.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Hartree · 2016-07-24 14:12 · Score: 5, Funny

But, but...
The dog really did eat my homework!
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Sarten-X · 2016-07-24 15:14 · Score: 4, Interesting

It's not an excuse. It's an explanation. Those are different things.
The problem with the emails is their source. WikiLeaks has shown great interest in anti-US material, and comparatively very little interest in anything that disparages Russia. Their bias has been analysed pretty thoroughly, and it calls their motives into question. That, in turn, means we must question the integrity of anything they release.
For example, consider the differences in the edited and un-edited versions of the Collateral Murder video. The raw footage shows a pretty typical battle, where a group of men, some of them armed, are loitering in an area where American troops have been under attack all morning. The edited version shows a group of men, and highlights that two of them are not armed, and in a slow-motion frame comparison, shows that one of the apparent weapons was actually a telephoto camera lens, then shows them being attacked by American fire. There are numerous other differences.
There's a huge difference in context between the two versions, which Assange himself has said was intentional for "political effect". In the raw video, the soldiers' actions are justified, though mistaken. In the edited version, they're portrayed as ruthless killers intentionally targeting civilians.
Now WikiLeaks has released a bunch of emails. That's great, but we must ask: what editing has been done here? Did they (or their possibly-Russian source) strip out any emails that conflict with the "DNC is corrupt" narrative? Are the emails signed? Is it possible or probable that some of the damning emails edited or completely faked?
These sorts of questions should be raised every time a leak is made public. The leakers always have an agenda, and it may not necessarily be to "inform the public".
With all that in mind, consider again what's being said. There is no denial of the emails' existence, and little discussion of the emails' content. Instead, at this point there's just a request to consider the trail the emails have followed, and the impact that has on their credibility.

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Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Grishnakh · 2016-07-24 15:38 · Score: 5, Insightful

WikiLeaks has shown great interest in anti-US material, and comparatively very little interest in anything that disparages Russia. Their bias has been analysed pretty thoroughly, and it calls their motives into question.
No, not necessarily. You're assuming that it's equally easy to get damaging materials from both countries. That's an incorrect assumption.
The explanation is simple: the US government does a horrible job with data security, and the Russian government is actually competent at it.
Anyone who's worked in or with the US government and dealt with USG computer systems and IT people knows just how incompetent they are. It's no wonder they're constantly being hacked. And also remember, here in the US, if you're a competent computer security professional, there's plenty of great-paying work for you in the private sector, since the tech companies are doing so well in this country. Why would you waste your time going to work for the government for lousy pay and having to deal with ridiculous bureaucracy? You can't even purchase a $5 piece of equipment you need for your job without filling out a bunch of forms and then waiting 6 months (I'm not exaggerating). So the only people who take these jobs are the ones who are utterly incompetent.
Over in Russia, things aren't the same; they don't have a booming tech sector like we do, so it's probably a pretty good move to go to work for the government there.
If hackers can easily steal emails from US government systems, but Russian government systems are locked up tight, then it stands to reason that WikiLeaks would post lots of US stuff instead. You can't get blood from a stone.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by skids · 2016-07-24 16:21 · Score: 2

so it's probably a pretty good move to go to work for the government there.
Well, unless you are the poor guy ordered by Putin to find the master crypto key to the Internet or get sent to Siberia.

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Someone had to do it.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Sarten-X · 2016-07-24 16:53 · Score: 1

I've worked for the government, and yes, it's as bad as you say. However, I find it very hard to believe that any other large country does any better. Bureaucracy has the same faults everywhere.
...And yet, other outlets manage to do just fine getting dirt on Russia, or at least don't editorialize so much.

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You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by lucm · 2016-07-24 17:51 · Score: 5, Funny

Over in Russia, things aren't the same; they don't have a booming tech sector like we do
They have a booming tech sector: spam, botnets, credit card fraud, etc.
And it's a real industry. Not happy with the stolen credit card numbers you bought? Call customer service and you get a discount on your next order.
They make non-Russian organized crime look like drunk hooligans.

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lucm, indeed.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by MillionthMonkey · 2016-07-24 17:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

The problem here is that anyone from Russia was able to read those emails at all.

I'm sure the Trump campaign is sloppy with email security as well. But nothing he writes (e.g. love letters to neo-Nazis) would surprise anyone at this point. The fact that HRC is already known for exercising poor network security has already compromised her campaign, and reminding people that "Russians love Trump and that's why they released my messages that they were able to access" is not a smart defense. (Neither is immediately hiring DWS upon her firing from the DNC and announcing that she "will continue to serve as a surrogate for my campaign nationally". The tone deafness here is astounding.)

Yes, the DNC email server contained no classified information. But don't keep reminding people that anyone in the world can read your email.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by quenda · 2016-07-24 18:44 · Score: 1, Insightful

WikiLeaks has shown great interest in anti-US material, and comparatively very little interest in anything that disparages Russia.

You have some evidence that Wikileaks has been receiving and withholding Russian documents? What is this material disparaging Russia that they have been rejecting?
Being against the American invasions of other countries hardly makes him pro-Russian. Unless you subscribe to the idiotic "you are either with us or against us" mentality.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Z00L00K · 2016-07-24 18:53 · Score: 1

I think that the Democrats will lose if Hillary is nominated while they will wake up to a bad hangover combined with a possibility to win if Bernie is nominated. I think that the people supporting Hillary have it easier to accept Bernie than the other way around.
Realize that the super delegates still haven't had their final say, even though they so far have endorsed Hillary.
Not that I have much hope, and if now Hillary is nominated then Bernie supporters will spread out to many different independent candidates which will weaken the party.

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If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Re: Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Z00L00K · 2016-07-24 18:54 · Score: 5, Insightful

By not voting you waste your vote. By voting for an independent you will at least make a statement.
It's the silent masses that allows for corruption to prosper.

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If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by iris-n · 2016-07-24 19:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

You're overthinking it. The explanation is much simpler: Wikileaks was created and is run by English-speaking people, for whom it is much easier to make contact with sources and hackers that speak English. And the sources are going to leak from organizations in the US, because that is where they work. And the hackers are going to hack networks in the US, because these are the networks they know.

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entropy happens
Re: Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 19:53 · Score: 2, Insightful

These aren't "good points" at all. Or at lay their irrelevant. Now that the DNC Chairman has resigned, even though the DNC had not confirmed the veracity of the emails, we can reasonably deduce they are true.
Whether or not there is other evidence painting the DNC in a better light is irrelevant. Blaming this on Russia is simply an attempt to deflect, eg. It's the Chewbacca defense. Whether or not there are other emails that may somehow show the DNC people to be not so corrupt is like trying to mitigate you murdering someone by pointing to your charitable quirks helping the poor e.g. it's irrelevant to the "crime" committed.
"Shooting the messenger" is a standard practice for corrupt politicians and their supporters.
Re: Cheesy 80's movie excuse by jovius · 2016-07-24 20:45 · Score: 1

Yes, and if one doesn't like any of the options there's always the option to cast an empty ballot. That's a protest vote at least. Imagine the effect of millions of empty ballots.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by SuricouRaven · 2016-07-24 22:31 · Score: 1

" You can't even purchase a $5 piece of equipment you need for your job without filling out a bunch of forms and then waiting 6 months"
Same here in the UK, too - I've done just that when trying to purchase an audio isolation transformer. Lots of them available, but none from suppliers on our 'approved supplier' list. In the end I just spent my own money and got one off eBay. So long as the boss's boss doesn't find out, all is well.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by rainmouse · 2016-07-24 22:59 · Score: 1

How many times have we heard those words. "If you have done nothing wrong then you should have nothing to hide."
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Salgak1 · 2016-07-24 23:01 · Score: 4, Insightful

. . . . and yet claim that Hillary's private email server was NEVER hacked by the Russians, or anybody else, for that matter.
Cognitive Dissonance, much ???
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Salgak1 · 2016-07-24 23:17 · Score: 1

"plenty of great-paying work in the private sector".
Yes, but only if you're willing to work at a contractor AND do relatively short-term gigs. Otherwise. . . you're at the mercy of cost-cutting bean-counters who think of Security as a cost-center, and decide you can be replaced by several much-cheaper H1b employees.
It's happened to me twice, in the past 5 years. . .
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by AmiMoJo · 2016-07-24 23:35 · Score: 1

What kind of editing would they do to these emails to make them seem worse than they are?
With the Collateral Murder video the extra footage doesn't really change anything. There is more context but the same conclusions about the legality of the soldier's actions and their general attitude towards Iraqi civilians remain the same. If anything the longer video makes it a bit worse, as it shows that they had even more opportunities to avoid killing those people or to assist them when the mistake was discovered.

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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by freak0fnature · 2016-07-24 23:42 · Score: 1

She never wanted to run for president in the first place...they forced her into it because they thought she was their best hope...which is sad really.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 23:50 · Score: 1

With all that in mind, consider again what's being said. There is no denial of the emails' existence, and little discussion of the emails' content. Instead, at this point there's just a request to consider the trail the emails have followed, and the impact that has on their credibility.
The DNC is glad there are people like you that slurp the coolaid. Even Russia wouldn't be that stupid as to alter them. But I'm sure Hillary followers are stupid enough to think they might. If the emails have been altered, the DNC could very easily show the original as proof. They didn't and they won't so that question has been answered.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Hodr · 2016-07-25 00:01 · Score: 5, Funny

Nah, he hires immigrants who will work for less.
Re: Cheesy 80's movie excuse by tburkhol · 2016-07-25 00:10 · Score: 1

An empty ballot is not an effective message. The least interested people will see "Winner took 51% of electoral college." Slightly more interest is required to get people to pay attention to "Winner took 51% of the popular vote." And we've all learned that electoral college is such that the winner can have a minority of the popular vote. Much more attention is required to get to the percentage of "undervotes." An actual vote for a 3rd party takes voting percentage away from the major candidates. "Winning" with 40% of the popular vote would be a pretty serious message.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-25 00:25 · Score: 1

yeah, so when China hands her a shit ton of money for her campaign, that's fine, but let Russia try to help out the schmuck, and suddenly she cries foul? What a cunt.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2016-07-25 01:01 · Score: 1

Democrats have literally said, in the past, businesspeople should be joyous for all the burdensome, expensive environmental regulation because it creates more business, more things that need doing.

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Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Shortguy881 · 2016-07-25 01:01 · Score: 1

That and Russia's corruption is pretty well known and public. No need for a Russian Wikileaks.

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Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2016-07-25 01:03 · Score: 2

Sorry, to finish your answer, look to the investors in said business and do wnat a journalist does...follow the money backwards from there!

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(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Nickodeimus · 2016-07-25 01:15 · Score: 2

Snowden's data dump has been released piecemeal because Snowden and whats his name the journalist (Glen Greenwald?) knew that if all of it was released at once it would cause worldwide upheaval and the fall of multiple governments. They didn't want that blood on their hands.

Ask yourself: What has changed since Snowden released the data he had? Pretty much nothing (in the US.) The status quo has been maintained.

This is because the populace's outrage was kept to a manageable level by letting the data trickle out instead of dropping it like the bomb that it is.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by ravenshrike · 2016-07-25 01:16 · Score: 3, Insightful

Hmmm, apparently the Russians found the DNC emails important enough to obtain but completely ignored Clinton's email server. Odd cyberwarfare priority that.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Grishnakh · 2016-07-25 01:29 · Score: 1

I'm not saying Russia's government doesn't have its own bureaucratic problems, but 1) its government is smaller than ours, and smaller organizations tend to be more agile than bigger ones, and 2) smart people are more likely to go to work for the government there than here in my opinion. Russia doesn't have a Silicon Valley or booming tech sector for their smart computer experts. Even in a government with bureaucratic problems, smart people are going to do a much better job with computer security than utterly incompetent people who can't get a job in the private sector.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by sycodon · 2016-07-25 01:35 · Score: 4, Insightful

"....what editing has been done here? "
A question that can be answered simply by the DNC publishing their own copies of said emails.
Interesting that they haven't, eh?

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When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by NoImNotNineVolt · 2016-07-25 02:11 · Score: 1

Is it possible or probable that some of the damning emails edited or completely faked?
Pretty sure if the emails were edited or completely faked, that's the explanation they'd be going with, as it's considerably more plausible than this "a vote against Hillary is a vote for Putin" joke. The fact that DWS is instead resigning from her role as DNC chair instead of offering such an explanation suggests that these emails might actually be legitimate.

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Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by StikyPad · 2016-07-25 02:12 · Score: 1

Seriously. "It's their fault for exposing our lies, not our fault for lying in the first place." Jesus Christ.
TBH, Hillary should be the one resigning, as she was the beneficiary of the DNC's manipulation. Actually, she should have already resigned over the email server, which was at best incompetence, and at worst criminal wrongdoing, but in either event a terrible lack of good judgment.

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Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by StikyPad · 2016-07-25 02:20 · Score: 1

WikiLeaks has shown great interest in anti-US material, and comparatively very little interest in anything that disparages Russia.
That may well be true, but Russia isn't presenting itself as the bastion of human rights, democracy, and transparency. Nobody would be shocked to learn that Putin was illegitimately and/or illegally manipulating popular support. That would just be par for the course.

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Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-25 02:22 · Score: 1

1. That's not what cognitive dissonance is.
2. Hillary Clinton's e-mail server and the DNC's e-mail server(s) are two entirely different things.
I can't stand the bitch, and even so, you need to get a fucking clue.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-25 02:29 · Score: 1

There was no evidence that Hillary's server was hacked. The emails that are being released came from the DNC server hack. That hack is well documented and they know the handle of the hacker that did it Gucifer. It is a bit confusing because the hacker initially claimed he also hacked Hillary's server, then came back later and admitted he had not.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by jellomizer · 2016-07-25 03:02 · Score: 1

While not trying to sound like a blind Hillary Supporter. Any Politician who has been in the game for a while had associated with corrupt people, and had some degree of corruption from it.
Sanders seem to avoid most of it from being mostly a nobody in the senate for most of his career. Senator (who runs as independent from a tiny state known for it quirky behavior).
While Clinton being First Lady of a Popular president, followed by a job as a Senator of New York (one of the largest states) then a job as Secretary of State. If you were to suckup to anyone she would be a good target.
Now Trump while hasn't been politically corrupted spent his career being the Corrupter.
Also I have met many people worked with Clinton. And apparently the real Clinton is much different than what the press makes her out to be. However corruption comes with being powerful. As people will want to influence you in any way possible.

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If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by MachineShedFred · 2016-07-25 03:31 · Score: 1

In my mind, this is the real question:
Is anyone really surprised? Between the DNC Chair being a Clintonite in previous campaigns, the absolute refusal to add more debates to the schedule because they only showed that Hillary only had the same tired old ideas that haven't worked, etc.
Everyone knew this "nominating process" was rigged from the start. These emails just add more confirmation to what we already knew.

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Re: Cheesy 80's movie excuse by danbert8 · 2016-07-25 03:44 · Score: 1

Except in pretty much every state empty ballots and write ins are not counted.

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Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by NoImNotNineVolt · 2016-07-25 03:55 · Score: 1

Everyone knew this "nominating process" was rigged from the start. These emails just add more confirmation to what we already knew.
Everyone suspected (not knew) this "nominating process" was rigged form the start. These emails add confirmation (not more confirmation, but initial confirmation) of what we suspected but did not know. It's like Snowden's NSA leaks, which confirmed suspicions but were similarly dismissed on the basis of "we already knew this". No, we already suspected. In the minds of rational agents, suspicion and knowledge are two separate concepts.

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Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by jellomizer · 2016-07-25 04:34 · Score: 1

The Media usually has her as a rather cold person who seems to be more strategic than caring. The people who I have talked to and they were all very consistent and worked on different political spectrums said that she was actually a rather warm person who actually listens and cares about the issues you bring up, even if she disagreed with it she didn't just dismiss them but listen to them to see if there was a good middle ground. And for the most part she actually cared about the people being affected by the action and less about just doing what is normally done.
That said, she has been in politics a long time, and her actions do not seem to mesh with people's reaction to her.

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If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Aighearach · 2016-07-25 05:17 · Score: 1

See, I wouldn't expect reality to go either way. Who broke into their system? If it was the Russians, I would expect the "excuse" for somebody breaking in would be that it was the Russians.
If it was somebody else, I'd expect them to say that it was that other group.
Your concept of what people say seems really excessively politicized.
Re: Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Aighearach · 2016-07-25 05:22 · Score: 1

When the political manipulation of information is "irrelevant" to your campaign to... attack politicians you don't like, you're just inside an echo chamber. Apparently a Russian one.
You just wave your hands and say "Chewbacca," but you're the one trying to confuse things. I'll give you a hint: having a foreign power breaking into US computer systems to screw with our election is a way, way bigger deal than, "somebody said something mildly offensive in an email, and nobody did the thing they recommended because it would offend people. But nobody got fired for talking about it."
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Aighearach · 2016-07-25 05:37 · Score: 1

Actually if you go back, most of what they trickled out the first 6 months were incorrect training documents. I don't know their real motivations, but educating you wasn't one. However, they did succeed at... something. They certainly sold papers.
It isn't that governments would fall, it is more that if the real, high quality information was just released, then people could look at what it means, and they could respond to it. By trickling out lies and mistakes first, they made sure that was no momentum for change. So you're sorta right, except that you just wave your hands assume that heads would roll or whatever. Or, policy would be debated would be another thing that might have happened in some places.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Aighearach · 2016-07-25 05:49 · Score: 1

That and Russia's corruption is pretty well known and public. No need for a Russian Wikileaks.
This exactly. Russian bad-dealing is often reported on, but it doesn't sell papers in the West because it isn't news. Russians will pretend they don't believe it, but if you ask them off the record they generally approve of corruption or rule-breaking by a strong leader.
American corruption is news because Americans care out it, it is as simple as that. Of course, this story isn't about corruption, it is about somebody sending a mildly offensive email and their co-workers ignoring it. So the boss got fired. And that tiny little story is bigger news to a lot of people than learning that the Sochi olympics were fake, like pro-wrestling.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by hambone142 · 2016-07-25 05:54 · Score: 1

Pot calling the kettle black. They're worried the Russians are effecting the election outcome and at the same time the DNC was doing the same with its anti Sanders tactics.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Aighearach · 2016-07-25 05:57 · Score: 1

You seem to miss that HRC is not the DNC. Why would the DNC having poor network security have anything to do with Clinton, or reflect on her at all? Because they're both from the same political party? What?
As for security, it is known at this point that while she was at the State Department, the network security people (who are not hired by the Secretary of State, by-the-way) dropped the ball (as all government departments do every year...) and the network has hacked multiple times, exposing emails to theft. However, Clinton's private email wasn't hacked. But people who hate her will get that backwards every time, even right it has been explained to them. They just hate for no (apparent) reason.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Aighearach · 2016-07-25 06:00 · Score: 1

With the Collateral Murder video the extra footage doesn't really change anything.
The only reason this is true is because collateral damage, including loss of civilian life, is not illegal, is not surprising in war, and isn't even what the accusation was. Even in your own phrasing of it you try to propagandize it with the word "murder," but accidentally killing the wrong guy during a war is not murder.
What the context shows is that it wasn't even a big mistake; the guy running around with a camera was apparently embedded in an enemy military unit, and it isn't surprising that his tripod looked like a gun. The context shows that the accusation is based on knowing lies, it isn't just a difference of opinion about what should or should not be allowed during war.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Aighearach · 2016-07-25 06:06 · Score: 1

I'm not sure why it is presumed by some, who are apparently not even Democrats, that the Democratic Party would hire people already involved in politics who each actually support specific candidates. Apparently the sin that was committed was not switching to a different email account before sending certain emails. If everything else was exactly the same, all the words were the same, but the email was sent from the right account? No story. Is sending an email from the wrong account automatically an extreme horrible act?
People who already dislike Hillary are "outraged." I get that. But the words they're shouting are totally absurd when you look at the facts of what they're accusing people of. They even point the finger at her, "Somebody who supports her sent an email from the wrong account! And the email said her name!" Yeah.... so?
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Aighearach · 2016-07-25 06:10 · Score: 1

IME it is a lot easier to protect a single server than a whole office network where some of the computer inside the network have to be shown respect by other computers. With a single computer, you don't have to trust anything else on the LAN, and with a good firewall it might be nearly impossible to break into it unless you get lucky. With a big office full of computers, a stray wifi printer plugged into the wrong port might turn into a major attack vector.
It was already reported in the past that while Hillary was using the "wrong" email account, her work emails were likely accessed by foreign agents, and that her private server is not believed to have been. But that gets ignored by people who pretend to care about this stuff, for obvious reasons.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Aighearach · 2016-07-25 06:14 · Score: 1

That's a rather absurd thing to say.
Back in the 1990s it was widely reported that Bill and Hillary had discussed both of them wanting to run for President... while they were college students. Before they were married. As young lovers, both of them becoming President is what they were dreaming of together. And they're achieving those dreams.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Aighearach · 2016-07-25 06:16 · Score: 1

As somebody who has been following politics continuously since elementary school, I find it shocking that there are people who consider "employee of a major political committee has a preference for a particular candidate" to be a sign of "corruption." Wow. Just wow. Imagine if these people read a one page discussion of Halliburton and war funding! Their heads would explode.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by tburkhol · 2016-07-25 06:31 · Score: 1

Snowden's data dump has been released piecemeal because Snowden and whats his name the journalist (Glen Greenwald?) knew that if all of it was released at once it would cause worldwide upheaval and the fall of multiple governments.
Snowden's data were released piecemeal because the public has a short attention span. If you tell them a shocking story today, there will be great outrage, it will be talked about on the Sunday talk shows, and then people move on to next week's outrage. To effect actual change, you need a drumbeat of outrage that burns for months without being so predictable to induce fatigue. The extended trickle has the side benefit of providing the reporters with a consistent stream of page views and repeat visitors.

What has changed since Snowden released the data he had? Pretty much nothing (in the US.)

Well, the PATRIOT act bulk metadata collection program ended. Of course, NSA has said it was ending anyway, and they didn't really need it, having already taken up a different strategy under different authority to get mostly the same information. Oh, and there's a 'public privacy advocate' supposed to argue against the NSA when they go before the FISC - a sort of public defender in the otherwise one-sided, kangaroo court.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by shutdown+-p+now · 2016-07-25 06:34 · Score: 1

I can assure you, based on what I've seen in the Russian government, you won't get many smart techies working there.
And while Russia doesn't have a Silicon Valley, US does, and it's not all that hard to immigrate when you're in this industry.
The reason why Wikileaks wouldn't be particularly interesting in Russia is because there's already abundance of information about corruption, excesses, and outright crime that is collected by activists from public sources. For example, the country's general prosecutor is now definitively known to have been in cahoots with a gang of criminals that terrorized an entire village into submission and paying them "protection money", and killed an entire family, including little children, to make a point to the others. Government's reaction? They called it all lies, and Putin personally made a point that the guy will stay.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by squiggleslash · 2016-07-25 06:35 · Score: 1

WikiLeaks has shown great interest in anti-US material, and comparatively very little interest in anything that disparages Russia

I agree with much of what you say but this line is just silly. We all know that Putin's Russia is a corrupt, barely democratic regime with a autocratic strongman in charge (an ex-KGB boss no less.)
Leaking evidence that they're terrible would be a waste of time.
Also add to this that Assange is Wikileaks, and Assange has spent the last few years holed up on an embassy in an environment which would be stressful and intimidating even for someone not considered persona-non-Grata by some of the most powerful countries in the world. It's not hard to believe he'd be far more interested in the machinations of a political party whose leadership currently holds the Presidency of the country most likely to lock him in a dungeon for the rest of his life, than memos at a poisoned tip umbrella company owned by Vladimir Putin.

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Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by squiggleslash · 2016-07-25 06:41 · Score: 1
I believe "editing" in this context meant "Deciding what emails to publish", not "Changing the content of the published emails", so the DNC releasing the originals wouldn't help.
Wikileaks have made it clear they haven't altered the content of the emails, and the fact real phone numbers and blameless people's names appear in the emails would seem to confirm that (If it turned out they were altered, but Wikileaks left in people's phone numbers, that'd be a spectacular PR own-goal on WL's behalf.)
1. - .
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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by amicusNYCL · 2016-07-25 06:50 · Score: 1

The problem with the emails is their source.
That's what Clinton and the DNC would like you to believe anyway. The problem isn't the source, the problem is the content. That and the fact that their systems were exposed at all.
But yeah, that's going to be the line, shoot the messenger. Blame Wikileaks, blame Russians, whatever it takes to distract from the actual content, the messages which show that the DNC was undermining the Sanders campaign as soon as they saw it as a potential threat to them pushing through the nominee they wanted. They show that the DNC engaged in a conspiracy to undermine the democratic process by not remaining neutral, by making sure that the person that they personally wanted to get nominated actually did get nominated, regardless of what other people wanted. They purposefully slanted the field in favor of their candidate. They violated their charter and are possibly liable for damages (join the lawsuit if you donated to Sanders). Past DNC chairs have also come out to say that this was completely unacceptable and should have been dealt with immediately, which of course was out of the question here since Wasserman-Schultz doesn't even try to pretend that she is anything but a Clinton surrogate.

That's great, but we must ask: what editing has been done here?
Well, apparently so much editing has taken place that no one at the DNC is alleging that there was any editing, and that the Clinton campaign and Obama both put pressure on Wasserman-Schultz to resign, which she finally did. Sounds like a bunch of fake emails, right?
This is a bunch of a bullshit spin, more of the same from the DNC and their loyalists. All of the attempts to deflect the story towards Russia, or Wikileaks, or whatever, basically amounts to "We would like to issue an apology: we apologize for getting caught." The DNC does not want to address the content of the emails, like you said, they would rather try to deflect the discussion and attack the messenger and go one acting like Hillary is the future of this country.
The line that we're going to hear repeated over and over during the convention in Philadelphia is that everyone needs to band together in order to defeat Trump. The problem with that narrative is that the DNC pushed through a nomination for a candidate who has serious problems with her ability to beat Trump, and they pushed out the candidate who consistently beat Trump in polls. If it was true that what they really want is to beat Trump then they should have nominated the better-performing candidate, not start themselves out with a handicap. Their goal is not and never has been to just beat Trump, their goal is to elect Clinton. They don't want the best candidate, they want Clinton.

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"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by amicusNYCL · 2016-07-25 06:59 · Score: 1

Right, if there's one thing I know about Hillary Clinton, it's that she doesn't want anything to do with positions of power. She's a super-humble, totally honest person if I've ever seen one. She's really a pawn of the DNC, and definitely not the other way around.

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"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by amicusNYCL · 2016-07-25 07:00 · Score: 1

Off topic, but you can probably start thinking about a new sig.

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"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by MillionthMonkey · 2016-07-25 07:21 · Score: 1

You seem to miss that HRC is not the DNC. Why would the DNC having poor network security have anything to do with Clinton, or reflect on her at all? Because they're both from the same political party? What?
I agree that HRC != DNC (...sort of...) but that level of nuance is useless for damage control since the average voter will equate the two.
Re: Cheesy 80's movie excuse by c.s.carlson6 · 2016-07-25 07:57 · Score: 1

People have been "not voting" for years you clod! You are right though, it's sends a powerful message, it says, "I don't mind, please keep exploiting us!"
Re: Cheesy 80's movie excuse by c.s.carlson6 · 2016-07-25 08:05 · Score: 1

What nonsense. Wikileaks is a whistleblower organization that regularly exposes corruption and human abuse world wide. Exposing corruption in the US government doesn't make them anti-American, it makes them pro-American. They are providing information to citizens about the affairs of their corporate owners. Go Shill elsewhere you turd sandwich.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Hognoxious · 2016-07-25 10:05 · Score: 1

the legality of the soldier's actions

Which one? Private O'Malley? Corporal Kazinsky?

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Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Nehmo · 2016-07-25 10:33 · Score: 1

Correct. The Collateral Murder video says the same thing either long or edited. Sarten-X was just trying to make a pro Hillary argument. His other remarks are weak too.
As others have said, it's the content on the emails that is is revealing; the path they took to become public is irrelevant.

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(||) Nehmo (||)
Re: Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Nehmo · 2016-07-25 10:38 · Score: 1

These aren't "good points" at all. Or at lay their irrelevant. Now that the DNC Chairman has resigned, even though the DNC had not confirmed the veracity of the emails, we can reasonably deduce they are true.
Whether or not there is other evidence painting the DNC in a better light is irrelevant. Blaming this on Russia is simply an attempt to deflect, eg. It's the Chewbacca defense. Whether or not there are other emails that may somehow show the DNC people to be not so corrupt is like trying to mitigate you murdering someone by pointing to your charitable quirks helping the poor e.g. it's irrelevant to the "crime" committed.
"Shooting the messenger" is a standard practice for corrupt politicians and their supporters.
The Russian defense is so slimy, hearing it makes me want to vote for Trump. If only the guy were sane.

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(||) Nehmo (||)
Re: Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Nehmo · 2016-07-25 10:44 · Score: 1

But there won't be millions. Maybe if you were charismatic and started a major protest following, you could do it. But it still wouldn't accomplish anything.
Besides, nobody pays attention to the few protest ballots that are cast. If you are lucky, the story of protest votes may merit a brief article under weird news.

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(||) Nehmo (||)
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Dread_ed · 2016-07-25 11:25 · Score: 1

remember their bureaucracy had it's reset button hit recently with the whole government collapse. It's less entrenched, has less influence, and is less effective at mucking up the machinery. Also, with a scary as fuck, I-will-arrange-your-murder-the-disappearance-of-your-family-and-the-euthanasia-of-your-parakeet, retired-or-is-he intelligence spook running the country with an iron fist and bulging pectorals, people in the bureaucracy would be downright stupid or outright suicidal to play the obstructionist card with him.

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When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Dread_ed · 2016-07-25 11:28 · Score: 1

They're still editing them!
And deleting the "personal" ones....

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When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Grishnakh · 2016-07-25 11:29 · Score: 1

Funding is not the problem with government acquisition. Lack of funding is not what causes it to take 6 months to buy a simple commercially-available part, it's sheer bureaucracy. Some idiot Congressman gets the idea that they need to set up a huge government program to look through all the government's property to make sure they don't have that $5 part in inventory somewhere, even though it'll take much more than $5 to get it and ship it after you account for the time and salaries of all these government workers, but they do this to "prevent government waste".
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Zxern · 2016-07-25 13:45 · Score: 1

Or using Trump tactic of "people are saying" as if that actually holds any real weight.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Zxern · 2016-07-25 13:50 · Score: 1

I think the fact that no one is contesting the veracity of the emails says a lot. If they were edited/altered it would have been pointed out right away to discredit the entire dump. The fact that hasn't happened only tells me they are real, and the "Russian" is a misdirection to deflect the conversation away from the contents.
Re: Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Zxern · 2016-07-25 13:54 · Score: 1

Yes it is. It's exactly the kind of thing that is turning people away from the party. If they were smart they'd use this as an opportunity to clean house and demonstrate their supposed ideals. The fact that they aren't only proves how corrupt they really are.
Re: Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Z00L00K · 2016-07-25 17:43 · Score: 1

Empty ballot or not voting is bad because then they can claim that you just don't care about politics and want to be ruled. That's why it's important to vote on the alternative that you think is least evil.

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If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Aighearach · 2016-07-25 20:15 · Score: 1

Ah, yes, I think I learned about that one in Logic class... Argument From the Ignorance of Others!
I'm not really impressed. There is no "nuance" in a basic statement of identity.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by MillionthMonkey · 2016-07-26 07:53 · Score: 1

"Argument From the Ignorance of Others" is basic politics in a country where 60% of the population believes in Noah's Ark.
Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse by Aighearach · 2016-07-26 19:57 · Score: 1

What if lots of people only pretend to agree with it, because they agreed to say so? What if they're being metaphorical when they agree? But repeat the party line anyways?

well well well by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 10:39 · Score: 5, Insightful

to me, unless you can show the integrity of the original messages was compromised, then the "who did it" does not matter as much as "what the emails say".

now, if the messages were altered to promote an agenda, I agree with the Hillary Camp.

if this is what the emails did say, then I feel we have a problem with the undermining of the vote of the people.

Re:well well well by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 11:03 · Score: 2, Interesting

to me, unless you can show the integrity of the original messages was compromised, then the "who did it" does not matter as much as "what the emails say".
Then you are a fool and you deserve to be ruled by Putin / Trump.

If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
Look it up. Lies by omission are the easiest ones. All he needs to have done is a) hidden the emails which help Clinton and b) hidden the ones which hinder Trump and c) kept the ones which guarantee his control over Trump.
The accusation is extremely serious and a big risk. It's probably true because if they get found out that it isn't they lose big time. Putin has every reason to prefer a buffoon like Trump over Clinton. There's also pretty good evidence he's interfering with European politics, so why shouldn't he do the USA too? Still, this needs better evidence and confirmation than we have now.
Re:well well well by guruevi · 2016-07-24 11:11 · Score: 1, Insightful

Whose vote and whose people? The US elections are ran and decided by the ultra-rich. The Koch brothers and similar donors on one end and people like Zuckerberg, Clinton and Obama on the other.

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Re:well well well by ShanghaiBill · 2016-07-24 11:13 · Score: 4, Insightful

Hillary has already thrown Wasserman-Shultz under the bus, so it looks like the emails are real. Nobody is claiming they aren't.
Re:well well well by drnb · 2016-07-24 11:17 · Score: 5, Funny

A bunch of petty, unethical DNC employees (which is highly shitty, no question) still pales compared to a Manchurian candidate.
Given the Clinton's history of illegal political financial support from China it may be best not to mention Manchuria.
Re:well well well by Fragnet · 2016-07-24 11:17 · Score: 5, Insightful

I was watching the pea under the thimble there. Nice use of the phrase "working with". Don't think it wasn't noticed. We go from Russia leaking something in it's own interests, to the Republican Party being in cahoots with Russia in leaking DNC emails. This is all notwithstanding the fact that the DNC want you to believe that Russia leaked them, even if they didn't, to deflect attention away from their content - something you haven't really considered.
Re:well well well by taustin · 2016-07-24 11:28 · Score: 2

Indeed. If the truth hurts you, the problem isn't with who reveals it, the problem is with you. And Hillary Clinton will do anything she possibly can to obfuscate that fact.
Of course, Trump will do anything he can to emphasize it.
In neither case does it matter if the emails are real or not.
Re:well well well by guises · 2016-07-24 11:41 · Score: 5, Insightful

You're making a mixed metaphor here. Clinton and Obama are not the ultra-rich, they're just regular rich, and they're the subjects of the contest (or the prizes, if you will) they're not the contestants.
Re:well well well by prisoner-of-enigma · 2016-07-24 11:56 · Score: 5, Insightful

In neither case does it matter if the emails are real or not.

Well, actually it does matter. If the emails are real -- and everything thus far indicates they are, including press releases from HRC's campaign and the resignation of the DNC chairwoman -- it shows systematic corruption within the DNC. Not that comes as any surprise. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was an unabashed Clinton supporter, carrying water for her at every opportunity. Only a fool could believe she was capable of running the DNC on an impartial basis.
Unfortunately there are a lot of fools out there.

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In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Re:well well well by 140Mandak262Jamuna · 2016-07-24 11:57 · Score: 3, Insightful

What the email actually say are normal intra party politics, back stabbing and intrigue. They have not found corruption, extortion or even racist jokes being forwarded. In fact for an email dump it is pretty innocuous. Some embarrassment for some. Debbie seems to be the one they are throwing under the bus. ( She actually looks like Mrs Frizzle from The Magic School bus).
But I am also intrigued by the Russians deciding to help Trump. Foreign powers meddling with our elections, swaying our public opinion we should be very very wary about. It is definitely illegal for foreign entities to give campaign contributions. It seems to be some sort of in kind contribution. That Russia does not want Hillary seems to be a very big plus point in her favor.

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sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Re:well well well by whoever57 · 2016-07-24 11:59 · Score: 2, Interesting

Indeed. If the truth hurts you, the problem isn't with who reveals it, the problem is with you. And Hillary Clinton will do anything she possibly can to obfuscate that fact.
The problem is the asymmetry here. What do you think a cache of RNC emails would show?

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The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Re:well well well by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 12:00 · Score: 2, Insightful

Particularly amusing given the close ties Clinton's campaign manager has to Russian interests (not to mention the rest of the Clinton organization). This is very much a case of projection. Blame the opposition for what you're doing, and decrease the impact of any revelations of your own actions.
Re:well well well by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 12:39 · Score: 2, Insightful

The Russians do not need to collaborate with anyone to promote their own agenda. The Russian government has created an alternate reality and at this point I doubt they could recognize any truth if they tried. They have shutdown or taken over every media outlet in Russia. They have passed laws basically outlawing any encryption and publishing any information critical to the government is punished.
Back when the Ukraine situation first started and it looked like Putin was going to lose his puppet someone wiretapped the US Embassy and then released recordings of the US Ambassador talking about the situation. And not a single person complained about a foreign state government spying on another. At the time everyone was to busy castigating the NSA for having the temerity to spy on foreign governments. The simpering morons scattered across Europe totally ignored the fact that the NSA didn't violate their privacy. It was their own state intelligence agencies who collected their data which they shared willingly to the NSA if requested.
Of course Putin is interfering in Europe. He knows perfectly well that he can do anything he wants because any geo-political-military power Europe had atrophied a long time ago. I believe the ruling commissars in Brussels solution to problems with Russia would include giving Russia back all of their vassal states in eastern Europe. And that is really sad because Russia is only a few steps away from becoming a 3rd world country. International power is built on top of military and economic dominance. Russia has neither. The state of California has a higher GDP than Russia. Russia's economy is miniscule compared to the US, China, and a unified European market.
Re:well well well by Dahamma · 2016-07-24 13:02 · Score: 2

I think you meant "Trump's campaign manager"...
http://www.politifact.com/glob...
Re:well well well by Fragnet · 2016-07-24 13:23 · Score: 4, Insightful

Why are you talking about Trump? This is about the Democratic Party and leaked emails. See what you're doing? Moving the pea under the thimble again...
Re:well well well by swb · 2016-07-24 13:31 · Score: 4, Interesting

That they were terrified of the loudmouth Donald Trump and grew increasingly terrified as he completely sabotaged their own attempt at coronating their own hand-picked stooge to run against Hillary in 2016.
The only difference between them and the Democrats? The RNC failed to derail Trump and the DNC and Hillary Clinton vociferously denied colluding to railroad Bernie Sanders.
The difference is also in expectations. Everyone *expects* the RNC and its major donors to guide a hand-picked favorite son into November. It's who they are. They don't operate under ideological banner that promotes free, open and fair elections -- they want to gut the Voting Rights Act, for example.
The Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, promote themselves as the guarantors of democracy, extending and protecting the franchise and voice of all people. Which is now being exposed for what it was all along -- a sanctimonious fiction and a bill of goods. Instead they spent their time promoting their own handpicked favorite and undermined a worthy and successful challenger.
I try not to buy into the Hillary is corrupt meme. But at this point, there's just too much evidence she's conniving and fundamentally not honest. And I'm not a Trump supporter, but I do have a certain admiration for the way he eviscerated the Republican party.
Re:well well well by Applehu+Akbar · 2016-07-24 13:32 · Score: 1

"What do you call Jew-on-Jew antagonism (DWS vs. BS)? "
MSNBC?
Re:well well well by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 13:34 · Score: 1

I think they're both important. The shit in the emails is a big deal. But if there is a nation-state sponsored Watergate going on, that's a big deal too.
Vice.com makes a pretty convincing case, but it could be some kind of next-level false flag too. But even if it is, "Guccifer 2.0" is still bullshit.
Maybe there's a thread-the-needle version of reality where there actually is a lone hacker, but reading CrowdStrike's original report about multiple Russian intrusions, it's hard to read that (written before Guccifer 2 showed up) and come away thinking it's that simple...
Re:well well well by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 14:09 · Score: 3, Insightful

Well actually, one of the many things Trump has proven, is that despite all their money, the Koch brothers lost very badly. Even in the democrats, Sanders was not so far from winning.
(Another thing Trump has proven, is that all those movies with villains that were far too stupid to be credible, well, actually, they are credible.)
Re:well well well by techsoldaten · 2016-07-24 14:31 · Score: 4, Insightful

Actually, the DNC has a contractual and fiduciary responsibility to stay neutral in a primary, because they sign contracts to that affect.
Section 4 of the Democratic Party charter reads this way:
"In the conduct and management of the affairs and procedures of the Democratic National Committee, particularly as they apply to the preparation and conduct of the Presidential nomination process, the Chairperson shall exercise impartiality and evenhandedness as between the Presidential candidates and campaigns. The Chairperson shall be responsible for ensuring that the national officers and staff of the Democratic National Committee maintain impartiality and evenhandedness during the Democratic Party Presidential nominating process."
The chairperson was Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who resigned / was fired earlier today. The CEO of the DNC is Amy Dacey. But look at their emails and tell me if that lives up the charter.
https://www.facebook.com/DNCfr...
Some of us are suing.
Re:well well well by aepervius · 2016-07-24 14:54 · Score: 1

How do you demonstrate that ? Heck for starter how do YOU know that the dumps trully represent what was sent ?

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Re:well well well by quantaman · 2016-07-24 15:03 · Score: 1

In neither case does it matter if the emails are real or not.
Well, actually it does matter. If the emails are real -- and everything thus far indicates they are, including press releases from HRC's campaign and the resignation of the DNC chairwoman -- it shows systematic corruption within the DNC. Not that comes as any surprise. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was an unabashed Clinton supporter, carrying water for her at every opportunity. Only a fool could believe she was capable of running the DNC on an impartial basis.
Unfortunately there are a lot of fools out there.
How? How does it show "systematic corruption within the DNC"? Show me the actual emails that suggest this.

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I stole this Sig
Re:well well well by quantaman · 2016-07-24 15:25 · Score: 1

Seriously, all that because she either a) made up a meaningless story about the origin of her name on a diplomatic mission, or b) was told, or misunderstood the story herself.

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I stole this Sig
Re: well well well by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 15:34 · Score: 1

Frame Bernie as (((A JEW))) to southern voters to discredit him.
If you don't think that's corruption, you're either a complete fucking moron, or an evil piece of shit pretending to not see the problem.
Re:well well well by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 15:40 · Score: 1

The Koch's will support whoever they think will do their bidding.
And yes, that includes Hillary Clinton.
Re:well well well by schnell · 2016-07-24 16:33 · Score: 4, Insightful

The US elections are ran and decided by the ultra-rich.
Sorry to sound confrontational, but that's bullshit. It just is. And ironically Donald Trump is the one that proves it.
Yes, his election to GOP nominee isn't an election for office, but he was detested and denigrated by pretty much every single Republican establishment "ultra rich" figure. He won because the Joe Sixpacks of the GOP - their wisdom in doing so is a separate discussion topic - actually voted for him more than anyone else. Despite all the best efforts of the "rich" and the "establishment" in the party, the demagogue with popular support ACTUALLY WON.
If the fact that the Republican Party - the REPUBLICAN FUCKING PARTY - can be taken over by popular votes against the fervent wishes of the Koch Brothers, the Bushes, the Cruz Evangelicals and everyone else who hated them, then nothing will. The rich did not get their way. And spare me any "false flag" bullshit. The Republican Powers That Be did not conspire to sink their own party. Joe and Jane Sixpack voted for somebody else, and they had to suck it up.
Saying that the rich own elections is a cop-out. Yes, the US is a democratic republic. Yes, the elections for the two highest offices in the land are mediated through an Electoral College. But by and large, the US is absolutely a functional democracy. It's easy to claim it's not because you don't like who got elected... but really you should think about the idea that the people in power are really there because 51% of the voting public wanted them there, even if they disagree with you. Not liking the results of democracy is its great hazard.

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"95% of all Slashdot .sig quotes are incorrect or completely fabricated." -Benjamin Franklin
Re:well well well by Orgasmatron · 2016-07-24 16:42 · Score: 5, Insightful

You must be using the newfangled definition of corruption, popular with people that aren't familiar with the word graft, that only includes actual cash bribes for services or lenience.
Sorry to say that graft is only one type of corruption. Corruption is a broad thing. So broad that it is hard to pin down a concrete definition that includes everything and excludes nothing.that people consider to be corruption. The basic idea is that if a person is in an office or position of authority, and that authority is intended to be used for the benefit of some person or group, corruption is any time that person secretly uses their authority for their own benefit, or for the benefit of anyone other than the intended beneficiary, particularly when the intended is harmed or neglected in some way.
Seen in that light, it is hard to pretend that the DNC isn't riddled with corruption from top to bottom. They had a duty to the nation's democrats to run the primary process in a manner specified by the rules, which included neutrality, transparency, etc. What happened instead?
And it isn't enough that the DNC is corrupt, it is also corrupting. You read the exchanges with the press? Surprise, CNN and MSNBC see themselves are the propaganda wing of the democrat party. Is that what they told the FCC and the American people they were going to be doing?

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See that "Preview" button?
Re:well well well by Princeofcups · 2016-07-24 16:42 · Score: 2

What the email actually say are normal intra party politics, back stabbing and intrigue. They have not found corruption, extortion or even racist jokes being forwarded. In fact for an email dump it is pretty innocuous.
Doesn't matter. People have already made up their own fantasy world around this, and no one is ever going to get them to change their minds. Facts are meaningless when you make your decisions based on emotion. Hate and fear being the easiest ways to control those emotions, and people.

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The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Re:well well well by tsotha · 2016-07-24 18:50 · Score: 1

The Clintons aren't quite as ultra-rich as the Kochs, but at $100m+ they're still ultra rich and easily have enough money to play this game.
A reward for a lifetime of public service, I guess.
Re:well well well by Z00L00K · 2016-07-24 18:59 · Score: 1

The fact that DWS resigned is a clear sign that there's some truth. If the messages were altered, then the only way to counter that would be to publish all the original messages as fast as possible and let people decide.
Of course it would be painful to publish internal communication but the damage of having false info out there would be worse. And if the messages published by Wikileaks were altered then it would cause Wikileaks to get discredited enough to lose any significance.

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If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Re:well well well by Rakarra · 2016-07-24 19:07 · Score: 2

Fragnet, AC, come on, can't we both admit that BOTH Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are horrible excuses of presidential candidates?
Re:well well well by Rakarra · 2016-07-24 19:19 · Score: 1

Sorry to sound confrontational, but that's bullshit. It just is. And ironically Donald Trump is the one that proves it.
No it doesn't. It just means the ultra-rich do not march in lock-step.
Re:well well well by Rakarra · 2016-07-24 19:25 · Score: 1

Indeed. If the truth hurts you, the problem isn't with who reveals it, the problem is with you.

Is it really? I mean, are you proud of everything you've ever done? Would you be happy with standing by all the statements you've made privately that you were sure no one else would ever hear? Do you have a problem with other people hearing the truth about you? And most of all, would you be ok with having the truth about you revealed, but the truth about those who have to gain from this remains hidden?
Re: well well well by Rakarra · 2016-07-24 19:28 · Score: 3, Insightful

Also, Trump tells you how it is, good and bad.
Trump is one of the most dishonest political candidates I've EVER seen, and my bar and expectations these days are very low.
Re:well well well by mrlinux11 · 2016-07-24 23:26 · Score: 1

The only thing worse than a Democrat or Republican is someone who thinks there's truly a difference, they are different sides of the same coin.
Re: well well well by voss · 2016-07-24 23:37 · Score: 1

Actually thats not what the emails said. The emails wanted to frame him as an atheist. Even in the bible belt most people have no problem with judaism and in Florida and NY being jewish is a big plus. DWS herself is jewish. Bernie Sanders being jewish was already well known.
Re:well well well by DirkDaring · 2016-07-24 23:50 · Score: 2

"Then you are a fool and"
No no no. When losing an argument always first deflect. You don't insult until much later on. Sheesh.
Re:well well well by sudon't · 2016-07-25 00:34 · Score: 1

"...the "who did it" does not matter as much as "what the emails say".
Really? It seems to me that, compared with "what the emails say", the fact that the Russians might be colluding with, or even simply manipulating a US election in favor of Trump is the lede here. I mean, it's not like the emails are telling us anything we didn't already know. Of course the DNC wants a party member for the nomination, and would do anything they could towards that end. They didn't want to end up like the Republicans, who lost control of their own party. The Democratic Party is not a public, democratic, institution. It just seems that way to the uninformed.

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-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
Re:well well well by 140Mandak262Jamuna · 2016-07-25 00:39 · Score: 1

Hey, Lookie here! Ralph Nader himself. So heres where you have been hiding since you gave us the Dubya presidency in 2000.

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sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Re:well well well by seven+of+five · 2016-07-25 00:48 · Score: 1

to me, unless you can show the integrity of the original messages was compromised, then the "who did it" does not matter as much as "what the emails say".

That's the problem, though. If I send you a file I say contains so-and-so's emails, and the content looks authentic, there's no way to verify that it is 100% authentic. I can edit any part of any message I want to make so-and-so look guilty as hell.
Re:well well well by swillden · 2016-07-25 00:50 · Score: 1

Sorry to sound confrontational, but that's bullshit. It just is. And ironically Donald Trump is the one that proves it.
No it doesn't. It just means the ultra-rich do not march in lock-step.
Did you read beyond the sentence you quoted?

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Re:well well well by sudon't · 2016-07-25 00:55 · Score: 1

First off - the email content isn't all that shocking. At least, not to anyone who understands how parties work. Sure, they'd love to project the illusion that the Democratic Party is actually democratic, but it's not. And simply because deflecting attention is a desirable outcome, that doesn't mean the charges are bogus. Trump has ties with the Putin government. That is a fact. Putin has tried to influence elections in other countries through hacking. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss these charges.

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-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
Re:well well well by Hodr · 2016-07-25 00:57 · Score: 1

All Trump does is reinforce that the cult of celebrity can win over a crowd. If he was a nobody, or just a regular politician with the same views, he wouldn't have had the support. The fact that he was a celebrity/famous, and that he had the money to campaign without party support, are what facilitated Joe Sixpack's vote.
Re:well well well by oh_my_080980980 · 2016-07-25 01:09 · Score: 3, Interesting

Ahem: "Almost immediately after her resignation, Wasserman-Schultz was given a position within the Clinton campaign as an honorary chair. " http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

So no she was not thrown under the bus. She did her job and was rewarded.
Re:well well well by will_die · 2016-07-25 01:19 · Score: 2

Good luck with that. LOL
Wasserman was hired by hillary within minutes of "quitting".
Re:well well well by almostadnsguy · 2016-07-25 02:42 · Score: 1

So all that money Bullhorn (hillary) took from the Chinese is OK, but for a "Super-HAC" of hackers to divulge illegal activity in the DNC is seen as seen as more "meddling in American politics". I wonder where some of you Snowden lovers sit with this? Is this whistle-blowing or hacking?
Re: well well well by KenHansen · 2016-07-25 02:58 · Score: 1

Sure, both are terrible candidates, but for the record, many in the RNC publicly worked against Trump, while the DNC was busy working against Bernie to benefit Hillary.
That puts the RNC slightly ahead of the DNC in my book.
Re: well well well by Spy+Handler · 2016-07-25 04:44 · Score: 2

Trump is one of the most dishonest political candidates I've EVER seen
I agree, Trump is one of the most dishonest political candidates I've seen.
Clinton, on the other hand, is the most dishonest. #1, numero uno.
Re: well well well by Rakarra · 2016-07-25 05:06 · Score: 1

Sure, both are terrible candidates, but for the record, many in the RNC publicly worked against Trump, while the DNC was busy working against Bernie to benefit Hillary.
That puts the RNC slightly ahead of the DNC in my book.
That we know of.
That's one of the wonderful benefits of seeing your opposition's secrets exposed while yours remain hidden. The opposition can only look worse in comparison.
Re:well well well by Rakarra · 2016-07-25 05:15 · Score: 1

All I'm saying is Donald is a member of the ultra-rich, and he HAD to be ultra-rich to have been able to get where he was. Joe Pleb wouldn't have been able to get all that media coverage, and he was constantly reminding us of his self-funding campaign which he kept talking up even after his campaign was no longer self-funding. Donald's managed to pull the wool over the eyes of a lot of people who think that somehow he's one of the common men, and that theirs are the interests he'll be working for. At least his trade rhetoric is a change that the rest of the super-rich won't like. So there's that.
Re: well well well by avandesande · 2016-07-25 05:39 · Score: 1

It kind of reminds me of Chris Rock's joke-

'Men lie the most,women tell the biggest lies.'

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love is just extroverted narcissism
Re:well well well by swillden · 2016-07-25 05:47 · Score: 1

None of what you just said contradicts the post you replied to. Perhaps you should read it. I'm not even saying I agree with it, just that it's clear you responded without reading.

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Re:well well well by trenien · 2016-07-25 06:43 · Score: 1

More like a reward for services to the private sector, working in public positions.
Re:well well well by Fragnet · 2016-07-25 07:00 · Score: 1

What is wrong with your brain? Are you completely fucking stupid?
Re:well well well by shutdown+-p+now · 2016-07-25 07:06 · Score: 1

You know, I'm not a fan of Russia and Putin, to put it mildly. But this whole outrage about "OMG how dare they influence our elections!", coming from Americans of all people, is rich. USA routinely does it all over the world, much more openly at that - and on occasion, it even sponsored military coups to overthrow a popularly elected candidate that was the "wrong choice".
Also, if you're worried so much about said influence, how about you tell your party and your candidate to not do any stupid shit that they can be blackmailed with later? Or if they do, at least don't put it in writing, on a poorly secured email server?
Re:well well well by CaptainLard · 2016-07-25 07:36 · Score: 1

the problem isn't with who reveals it, the problem is with you.

Those scenarios are not mutually exclusive. There can be enormous problems with both, simultaneously. In this case one is problem for the DNC, the other is a problem for the entire USA.
Re:well well well by Magius_AR · 2016-07-25 08:24 · Score: 1

All I'm saying is Donald is a member of the ultra-rich, and he HAD to be ultra-rich to have been able to get where he was. Joe Pleb wouldn't have been able to get all that media coverage, and he was constantly reminding us of his self-funding campaign which he kept talking up even after his campaign was no longer self-funding. Donald's managed to pull the wool over the eyes of a lot of people who think that somehow he's one of the common men, and that theirs are the interests he'll be working for. At least his trade rhetoric is a change that the rest of the super-rich won't like. So there's that.
For the entirety of his time as a candidate, he's had next to zero support for the mainstream party or any of the rich donors that fund them (all of whom went out of their way to try to get someone else to win). And he spent far less in campaign money than anyone else running for office. How the hell can you claim he's a candidate of the super-rich? He's by definition an example of "the people's choice" overcoming "the money machine".
Re:well well well by Orgasmatron · 2016-07-25 16:35 · Score: 1

That case has absolutely zero bearing on this, but emails do appear to provide the basis for "actual malice" if he wanted to sue for the craigslist ads
We all knew the news media was biased, and to some extent we had all made peace with that. But, like a PAC, they were supposed to cover their shame by holding out the fig leaf of nominal independence.
Did you notice that every news organization on the left picked the same key word to describe Trump's speech? Given what you know now, do you think that the next volume of the email dump would show an email from the DNC describing how they want that speech spun? Still trust the news?

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See that "Preview" button?
Re:well well well by Rexdude · 2016-07-25 19:53 · Score: 1

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was an unabashed Clinton supporter, carrying water for her at every opportunity
So doesn't that make her a Wasserwoman?

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Re: well well well by david_thornley · 2016-07-26 04:35 · Score: 1

Do you have any actual evidence of Clinton's dishonesty? I keep hearing bad things about her, but when I try to check them out I don't see the support. She's one of the most honest in this campaign according to Politifact. (I don't trust their methodology enough to pick out the difference between, say, Clinton and Kasich.) However, you insist that she's less honest than Trump, a fact that apparently came out of someone's ass.

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"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Re:well well well by david_thornley · 2016-07-26 04:37 · Score: 1

If you see no difference between, say, Bush and Obama, you're blind. Some differences include the ACA, which way the deficit went, and how many expensive military quagmires they've gotten us into.

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"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Re: well well well by coinreturn · 2016-07-26 06:54 · Score: 1

Do you have any actual evidence of Clinton's dishonesty? I keep hearing bad things about her, but when I try to check them out I don't see the support. She's one of the most honest in this campaign according to Politifact. (I don't trust their methodology enough to pick out the difference between, say, Clinton and Kasich.) However, you insist that she's less honest than Trump, a fact that apparently came out of someone's ass.
Don't bother asking for facts. The right wingers have successfully created the "crooked Hillary" meme despite 30 years of nonstop investigations and she's never been charged with any crime.
Re:well well well by jwhitener · 2016-07-28 09:33 · Score: 1

Theoretically we are a functioning democracy. Practically speaking, we are an oligarchy based on policy outcome. http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FPPS%2FPPS12_03%2FS1537592714001595a.pdf&code=74b1c0aff1ae5324589a28152cc6112a

Here's more credible evidence of Trump-Russia ties by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 10:42 · Score: 5, Interesting

Trump actually lobbied to change the Republican platform to favor Russia over the Ukraine -- one of seven strange Russia connections clearly documented by Josh Marshall.

"Post-bankruptcy Trump has been highly reliant on money from Russia, most of which has over the years become increasingly concentrated among oligarchs and sub-garchs close to Vladimir Putin," for example. And then there was the "secret financing" for a Soho real estate project from Russia and Kazakhstan. Even Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort, "spent most of the last decade as top campaign and communications advisor for Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian Ukrainian Prime Minister and then President whose ouster in 2014 led to the on-going crisis and proxy war in Ukraine."

I haven't been following Trump's campaign closely, but his ties to Russia are really clear.

Trumps son... by srsmith · 2016-07-24 10:42 · Score: 2

...is not wrong.

Re:Trumps son... by Dahamma · 2016-07-24 11:04 · Score: 4, Funny

Which one, Uday or Qusay?
Re:Trumps son... by Applehu+Akbar · 2016-07-24 13:39 · Score: 1

Which one, Uday or Qusay?
I think you mean Romano, Vittorio, Bruno or Benito Albino?

admits it helps trump? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 10:43 · Score: 1, Insightful

So on top of being scum the Clinton camp is also dumb enough to admit to the world this helps Donald. I hate Democrats so much. this has all been so obvious for so long. I say this as a Democrat.

Always the same with Hillary... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 10:43 · Score: 5, Interesting

Why does Hillary always claim some sort of big conspiracy every time she gets caught doing something? Perhaps, she should just concentrate on keeping her nose clean to begin with.

Re:Always the same with Hillary... by fred911 · 2016-07-24 11:05 · Score: 5, Insightful

"Why does Hillary always claim some sort of big conspiracy every time she gets caught doing something? "
Because most of the time she's dirty.

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Re:Always the same with Hillary... by Kohath · 2016-07-24 11:20 · Score: 5, Insightful

Because the press always lets her. Because anyone else would be gone after one or 2 times, but the Clintons keep getting a pass for scandal after scandal after scandal, always ensuring there will be yet another scandal in the seemingly endless list. Because the Democrats across the country lost so many elections in the past few years that there's no one else in the party with national stature who can mount a successful campaign. Because calling the other side "racist" is seen as an acceptable substitute for acting ethically or having any sort of thoughts on policy.
Re:Always the same with Hillary... by Rei · 2016-07-24 11:40 · Score: 4, Informative

A person can be both guilty of something wrong, and at the same time have a third party digging up / promoting evidence of it for their own, unrelated purposes.

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Hourglass says she knows a kid in Iowa who grows up to be president.
Re:Always the same with Hillary... by prisoner-of-enigma · 2016-07-24 11:58 · Score: 2

Why does Hillary always claim some sort of big conspiracy every time she gets caught doing something?

Because legions of her supporters will believe anything she says, no matter how absurd or self-serving.

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In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Re:Always the same with Hillary... by pipingguy · 2016-07-24 12:30 · Score: 1

Because Progressives project.
Re:Always the same with Hillary... by AK+Marc · 2016-07-24 12:41 · Score: 1, Insightful

Because it's usually true. The Republicans admitted that the Benghazi hearings were political in nature, timed to weaken her in the primaries. They found nothing new, and nothing that incriminated Hillary for anything other than having a small budget handed to her by the Republicans in Congress. When there are actual conspiracies, it's hard to not see conspiracies.

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Learn to love Alaska
Re:Always the same with Hillary... by superwiz · 2016-07-24 13:23 · Score: 1

Because she relies on the fact that she'll get away with the most implausible excuses possible. She always has before. She is confident she can do it again. Trump has beaten mobsters before without becoming a mobster, so she may be in for a rude awakening.

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Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Re:Always the same with Hillary... by phantomfive · 2016-07-24 15:27 · Score: 1

A lot of the newspapers here (Silicon Valley) have headlines today that are either negative for Clinton, or slightly positive for Trump. It's like the press can already smell the loser and are jumping to the winning side, or something.
As for me, I'm looking forward to the DNC this week!

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Always the same with Hillary... by phantomfive · 2016-07-24 17:04 · Score: 1

When 30% of your own party thinks you ought to be indicted for a felony
They should re-ask that question now that she's a candidate. A lot of people may have changed their minds.

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Always the same with Hillary... by Orgasmatron · 2016-07-24 17:13 · Score: 1, Interesting

You do know that everything in your post is a lie, right? Not necessarily your lie, if you are just a useful idiot.
The Republicans said things that you lefties have interpreted as admissions, but they were just statements of fact, and occasionally of fortuitous joy.
Pull some videos and read the actual words that were said, not the words that were reported.
Hillary ran obstruction on the investigation from day one. And now she's complaining that it took 5 years. Hmm. If only there had been some way to get this over with before the election year...
And you do know that the whole email thing came from this investigation, right? You may have heard the FBI director on TV recently where he described what a prosecutor needed to prove to secure convictions for several sections of US code relating to espionage and state secrets, and then he described that the FBI had found evidence sufficient to prove all of those elements. He also told Congress that she perjured herself, but since they hadn't specifically asked for that investigation, they are going to sit on it for another year.
That sounds like something new, and also something that incriminated Hillary.
You sound like Black Lives Matter, bitching that a conspiracy of cops is making the streets unsafe for criminals to ply their trades.

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See that "Preview" button?
Re:Always the same with Hillary... by AK+Marc · 2016-07-24 19:44 · Score: 1

You are a lying sack of shit. You assigned a side to me. That makes you a liar. You don't care about the truth. You just lie to cover up lies of people you attach yourself to. I don't like Hillary. I won't be voting for her.

You sound like Black Lives Matter, bitching that a conspiracy of cops is making the streets unsafe for criminals to ply their trades.
BLM pointed out that a black man, unarmed and laying down with his hands up is still likely to be shot by a cop. With witnesses and video. And the cops claim it's a good shoot. That's what BLM talks about. Not defending criminals, but defending the many innocent executed by cops.

If only the people abused by the police were armed. Blacks should just join the NRA and arm themselves.

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Learn to love Alaska
Re:Always the same with Hillary... by Orgasmatron · 2016-07-25 01:26 · Score: 1

You assigned yourself. You do know that your name is attached to your comments, right? And people can check your post history if they don't recall what you've said before?
You may live in a bubble where you can imagine yourself to be on the neutral ground between your socialist friends (your right) and your communist friends (your left), but that's not the middle of the scale.
P.S. It would be news to me if BLM actually protested a scenario like you described. Link it up if you know one.

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See that "Preview" button?
Re:Always the same with Hillary... by phantomfive · 2016-07-25 03:39 · Score: 1

I think part of it might be that people don't take pollsters seriously. They might not take politics seriously either.

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Re:Always the same with Hillary... by Type44Q · 2016-07-25 03:48 · Score: 1

Because the press always lets her.
And here's why.
Re:Always the same with Hillary... by budgenator · 2016-07-25 04:23 · Score: 1

They have little choice, they have to at least try to maintain the illusion of impartiality. Liberal bias in the media has been a conservative meme for almost 1/2 a century, but most of Con assumed it was a selection bias from Liberals being disproportionately drawn to the field; now it looks like deliberate and ongoing collusion between MSM and the DNC.

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Re:Always the same with Hillary... by bongey · 2016-07-25 06:16 · Score: 1

Democrat screaming "WHAT ABOUT BENGHAZI?", what a strange world we live in now.
Re:Always the same with Hillary... by AK+Marc · 2016-07-25 09:49 · Score: 1

You assigned yourself.
Not even close. I didn't say anything "left", other than you didn't like it. "The Republicans admitted that the Benghazi hearings were political in nature, timed to weaken her in the primaries." Google it. You'll get a list of Republicans saying that. I guess if I agree with the Republicans, I must be left.

You then said "you lefties" when talking about me. You assigned me to a group. I'm center. In political conversations, the righties call me left, and lefties call me right. Both feel the need to assign names to, then dismiss, anyone who doesn't agree with them. Makes both liars. Including you. BLM protested the innocent black man shot in the back. The cops called it a good shoot until the video came out. Walter Scott. Had the bystander waited 3 weeks to release the video, I have no doubt that the police would have officially ruled it a good shoot, and the riots would have been worse. The police haven't come out against the shooting of the innocent bystander who was the therapist trying to help the autistic person. That you refuse to acknowledge any of the innocents shot by police shows your racism, not BLM's.

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Learn to love Alaska
Re:Always the same with Hillary... by AK+Marc · 2016-07-25 09:55 · Score: 1

I'm not a Democrat. Who are you responding to?

Just because I point out Republicans are liars, and Trump is bad doesn't mean I'm voting for Hillary, or that I'm a Democrat. Try thinking next time. Or any time.

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Learn to love Alaska
Re:Always the same with Hillary... by david_thornley · 2016-07-26 04:42 · Score: 1

Because, very often, there is a conspiracy or organized defamation. Why did Congress spend so much time and money investigating the Benghazi incident, even when they failed to find wrongdoing time after time? People have irrational hate of the Clintons, and try very hard to come up with reasons.

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"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Re:Always the same with Hillary... by david_thornley · 2016-07-26 04:43 · Score: 1

Because she never does anything all that bad, and people complain that they can't put her in prison for behavior that nobody else has been charged for.

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"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes

Emails would have been leaked regardless by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 10:45 · Score: 1

Dems have dug their own grave so deep with one of the worst candidates ever following one of the worse presidents in history that it doesn't matter. The fact a person like Trump is doing so well is proof enough.

First, kill the messenger by Orgasmatron · 2016-07-24 10:47 · Score: 5, Insightful

What is always step one when dealing with a whistleblower? Try to distract the press by yammering nonstop about the whistleblower, and deflect every question about the leaked documents back to the leaker's motivations, integrity, etc.

Of course, given the content of the emails, I suspect that DWS has already given the marching orders to CNN and MSNBC so that the party doesn't have to dirty their hands by acting all shifty and evasive on TV.

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See that "Preview" button?

Re:First, kill the messenger by SadButResolved · 2016-07-24 23:35 · Score: 1

You forgot the re-org on Fox news to stop that pesky stuff about Epstein and the Bill on the plane.
The entire news spectrum thanks to clintons 1996 law change is owned by 3 or so folks that are all top doners to Hillary.
BTW who has Epstein the slaver's, movies? That is the golden ticket there I suppose.
The whole lot of them need to go into prison. If the FSB did put these emails out there(i doubt it), they are doing a bigger service than our FBI is doing for this country.
One can only hope the DNC, implodes and goes away like a bad MMO guild.

Horse Hockey by Snotnose · 2016-07-24 10:48 · Score: 5, Insightful

If the Russians wanted to help Trump they would release some "they weren't classified when on my server" emails that they got from her bathroom server.

You don't think the Russians, Chinese, Iranians, et all didn't hack that server? You're naive.

Re:Horse Hockey by ScentCone · 2016-07-24 11:45 · Score: 2, Informative

If the Russians wanted to help Trump they would release some "they weren't classified when on my server" emails that they got from her bathroom server.

Whether or not they have them, there's no need. The FBI has already said that Clinton was lying about that, and they have the evidence to prove it. They just don't have Clinton's leverage with the Obama administration, so no prosecution for that act and the lie told to cover it up - even though anyone else would be in deep legal trouble for doing exactly the same.

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Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Re:Horse Hockey by Bartles · 2016-07-24 11:47 · Score: 3, Informative

They can only be declassified by the agency that classified the information in the first place. So no, you're wrong. You're right about the arrogance, of course.
Re:Horse Hockey by prisoner-of-enigma · 2016-07-24 12:04 · Score: 4, Insightful

Even if they did get in (nice proof by intimidation you have there), how likely is it that there were REAL gems there?

So you're going with the "I broke the law, but it's OK because nothing bad happened" defense? Try that next time you get pulled over and fail a breathalyzer. "Hey officer, I'm drunk as a skunk but nobody got hurt so you can't charge me!" Tell me how that works out for you, the common citizen.
The laws Hillary broke did not require intent or damage to occur in order to be prosecuted. Go read the statute. Comey invented the whole "intent" thing out of thin air. She got a pass because her last name is "Clinton." Any other person would, at the least, be fired and banned for life from Federal service. At the worst, they'd be in jail already.

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In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Re:Horse Hockey by Snotnose · 2016-07-24 13:03 · Score: 1

Even if they did get in (nice proof by intimidation you have there), how likely is it that there were REAL gems there? Despite all the hoopla, I can't imagine HC to be careless enough to communicate any significant secrets there.

Hope that's tasty kool-aid you're drinking there. She was Secretary of State. Anyone with half a brain knows she was sending/receiving classified emails. Even if they weren't classified they would be very interesting.

You clearly didn't listen to Comey squirming out of why he won't press charges. He said there were sensitive secrets on that bathroom server, he said she was careless as hell, he basically demolished everything she's been saying for the last year.

WTF is proof by intimidation? You think I, an unemployed 50+ y/o software engineer, can intimidate a woman who has been dealing with scandal after scandal after scandal after scandal after scandal et al? Show me where my lever of power is, I'll be sure to pull it.
Re:Horse Hockey by Tablizer · 2016-07-24 13:12 · Score: 1

You have no evidence of this, ScentCone; you are talking out of your ass again, as usual on Clinton matters.
The FBI director asked anyone for a case of successful prosecution of similar charges going back several decades. Nobody named any.
Perhaps our laws need updating, but that's another matter.

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Table-ized A.I.
Re:Horse Hockey by ScentCone · 2016-07-24 14:05 · Score: 1

You have no evidence of this
You mean, other than the FBI director directly answering questions about whether or not specific things that Clinton swore were true were in fact untrue? Are you really going to pretend that you haven't watched video of him clarifying that in response to multiple direct questions with examples?

And yes, the director was very clear that other people would face consequences for the things that he found Clinton had done and lied about. No, he was not able to find anyone willing to cite an example of a cabinet secretary deliberately destroying public records and mishandling classified information. Who was going to come up with that? It doesn't happen (until now). What he should have asked for was for any intern-level high school student to spend some time giving him a list of the people representing the long history of criminal prosecutions for government employees breaking the law - including the removing of classified information, sharing it with non-cleared third parties, and more of the things which he agreed that Clinton did. Because there are numerous examples of felony convictions in just such cases, many of which involving far less critical behavior than Clinton's.

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Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Re:Horse Hockey by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 14:27 · Score: 1

Actually, you clearly didn't listen to Comey's testimony in front of the House. He specifically stated that her conduct didn't amount of gross negligence, there was no evidence of intent, and no evidence of a cover up. He didn't demolish anything she's been saying for the last year, beyond demonstrating that she was mistaken when she said there was no confidential emails on her server. For a statement to be a lie, it requires the person making the statement to know that what they're saying isn't true. You can believe all you want that Clinton must have know there was confidential information on her server, and therefore she was lying and not just mistaken, but that flies in the face of the actual FBI report, and Comey is far, far more credible on this issue than you are.
Also, anyone with half a brain knows that Clinton most definitely WASN'T intentionally sending confidential information by email. How do we know this? Because out of the vast amount of confidential information that she handled, nearly all of it was sent through the proper, secure channels. If she had no regard for keeping confidential information out of email, why did she do so over 99% of the time? Every bit of evidence indicates that the mishandling of information was accidental, and the law specifically allows for negligent handling of confidential information without a criminal charge. (Also of note, is that as part of their investigation, the FBI went back at looked at Powell's and Rice's email records, and guess what? Both of them were found to have a handful of emails that the FBI said any reasonable person should have known contained classified information, too. Or in other words, every Secretary of State that used email prior to Clinton, made similar mishandling mistakes.)
Re:Horse Hockey by Holi · 2016-07-25 00:35 · Score: 1

Makes you think maybe no one accessed the server. We know there were attempts but no one has offered any evidence of a successful breach.

You obviously agree with me since you used a double negative.

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Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Re:Horse Hockey by fustakrakich · 2016-07-25 03:08 · Score: 1

Heh, let's hope they don't investigate Trump's Russian connections. Might explain his desire to pull back on NATO. And let's also hope that the only "briefing" he gets a look at the Zapruder film.
Trump is the Kremlin's Kandidate. What are you, some kind of commie?

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“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Re:Horse Hockey by budgenator · 2016-07-25 04:59 · Score: 1

When you get a security clearance, you sign a paper agreeing to not divulge classified information and to safeguard it; stupidity and carelessness are not mitigating factors. If anything the bar should be set higher for the Secretary of State because we expect our leaders to set the example; a competent leader can not discipline their subordinates for doing the same thing they are doing.

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Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Re:Horse Hockey by Tablizer · 2016-07-25 07:06 · Score: 1

Reread your original post where you said "lying about". The Director said that NO clear evidence of intentional misconduct was found. Being sloppy is not "lying" to normal English users. I'm not condoning her sloppy behavior here, just pointing out that your claim as written has no evidence behind it. You are sloppy also, ironically.

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Table-ized A.I.
Re:Horse Hockey by shutdown+-p+now · 2016-07-25 07:12 · Score: 1

If the Russians wanted to help Trump, they would indeed do so - a week or two before the polls in November.
More likely is that they have enough materials to keep things interesting for the rest of the race by staggering the release. WL has already said they have more damaging DNC emails, for example. I wouldn't be surprised if they released them after Sanders finishes speaking today.
Re:Horse Hockey by ScentCone · 2016-07-25 10:51 · Score: 1

No, you're confusing two different things. There's whether or not she was "extremely careless" with classified material (the FBI chose the words "extremely careless," not me - and that's not at all like "sloppy"), and then - separately - there's whether or not she regularly, over and over again, lied about what she did. The FBI director, when asked specific questions on several fronts about Clinton's statements regarding numerous aspects of her conduct, said they her statements were (his word) "untrue."

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Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Re:Horse Hockey by Tablizer · 2016-07-25 12:36 · Score: 1

"Untrue" is not the same as lying.
I make factual errors all the time, and most are NOT lies. Some are due to carelessness, such as not double-checking, some are due to receiving incorrect information from others, and some are due to misinterpreting text because English is inherently vague and/or one context can be mistaken for another.
Work-related emails are often terse and assume prior work knowledge, domain lingo, and/or context.
This is "Office Life 101", I shouldn't have to explain it. Normal people know all this.

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Table-ized A.I.
Re:Horse Hockey by ScentCone · 2016-07-25 14:44 · Score: 1

He pointed out her untruthfulness about a long list of things, one at a time. She said she only ever used a single mobile device. The FBI said that was untrue. Why? Because she used several of them. It's not a matter of English usage or context.

Are you really suggesting that she, a person known to be glued to her device, wasn't clear on the fact she used several, instead of one? She said she never handled any classified information on that account. She, who as the nation's top diplomat and read in on all sorts of extremely sensitive material and programs involving billions of dollars and life-or-death activities, was unable to recall the dozens of email threads - including top-secret and ABOVE top-secret material - in which she participated? Or understand that things like imagery from the NRO of sites in North Korea are born classified? She claimed no, and the FBI said her characterization of all of that was untrue. Are you saying that she really meant it when she said that knew she'd turned over every single work-related email because her lawyers had read each and every one of them ... which the FBI reported was untrue (to say nothing of the thousands more they turned up, which she had deleted)? I know I don't need to run down the list of 100%-exactly-wrong things she said, even under oath in front of congress, as she tried to wish this away, because you already know about them. They're not "context" problems, or her not double-checking things. She repeated these untrue things dozens of times for a year and a half.

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Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Re:Horse Hockey by Tablizer · 2016-07-25 16:40 · Score: 1

Maybe she used a max of 7 devices but averaged 2.3. We don't know, we don't have that detail of what was used when. Why yap withOUT detail? Get details, facts, and numbers and THEN yap.

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Table-ized A.I.
Re:Horse Hockey by Tablizer · 2016-07-25 16:59 · Score: 1

Addendum
Two more points.
First, she made the decision early in her SOS position. Maybe the other devices were not yet assigned. The main point would still remain that 4 devices are better than 5 later on etc (all things being equal).
Second, the device quantity has nothing to do with secrecy laws. You are wandering off topic. The FBI investigated mishandling of classified material, NOT device quantity.

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Table-ized A.I.
Re:Horse Hockey by david_thornley · 2016-07-26 04:46 · Score: 1

Clinton lied about the emails, yes, but that's par for the course in politics. She mishandled a fairly small number of classified documents, with no intent to cause harm, and no apparent harm. That's not praise, but the fact is that nobody's been prosecuted for such relatively innocent mishandling. For that matter, nobody got prosecuted for some Republican scandals that look similar.

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"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Re:Horse Hockey by ScentCone · 2016-07-26 05:22 · Score: 1

No, you're missing the point. I mentioned the obviously misleading regular assertion by her about her use of "only one phone" because it fits into the pattern, plain to anyone who's been paying attention,and confirmed by the FBI, that she was not telling the truth about nearly every aspect of the whole topic. Along the way, she's asserted that she made the decision to use "only one phone" because it would have been inconvenient to have to carry more than one device. That was (at one point, before she changed her story several more times) her justification for using a single private email account to conduct all of her official business. It's now clear that that explanation was pure, deliberate fiction. She (and sometimes her aides) carried multiple devices. This demonstrates that she was looking you in the eye and lying about that. The FBI confirmed that, saying that her assertion on that front was "untrue."

The IT and security people at the State Department said that they warned her multiple times about the problems - both in terms of security, and in terms of complying with federal records laws - with her choice to refuse to use an official DoS email box. They got so much push back from her and her team that finally the head of that department told their worried employees to never talk about it again. The FBI has interviewed these people and confirms that. But Clinton said - repeatedly - that she specifically talked to State's IT, security, and legal people about using her own server and they said it was "approved." The FBI says that there not only no indication of any such request ever having even been made by her or any of her team, but that every layer of the DoS IT and security and legal apparatus say they would have flatly said "No!" to any such request. The FBI director says that her assertions about having asked for and received such approvals were "untrue" - they never happened. It goes on and on.

The FBI investigated all of these things because they were part of establishing the circumstances and motivations surrounding her mishandling of classified information - acts which the FBI director assures us would get anyone other than her in administrative legal hot water, at least, in their careers. So while checking out how and why so much mishandling occurred over the course of YEARS on Clinton's part, we see topic after topic on which she stated untruthfully what it was about and why and how or even whether she did such things. You're attributing ALL of her actions and everything she said for years afterwards to simple problems of context and "sloppiness?"

Even if we ignore the career-ending, no-security-clearance-for-you consequences that anyone else would face for both those acts and the lies following them, let's take your spin on it at face value. Is someone so spectacularly incompetent, careless, forgetful, and unable to judge the hiring of underlings to the point where an entire team of them ALSO all make the same "mistakes" and can't describe things truthfully really who should be the top law enforcement, intelligence, and military command figure in the country?

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Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Re:Horse Hockey by ScentCone · 2016-07-26 05:30 · Score: 1

The fact: she claimed repeatedly she only used one device, and explained WHY she only used one device. The FBI said that her claims, as demonstrated by her use of several devices, were "untrue." She spoke untruthfully. How much more simple do you need it to be? SHE is the one that made such a big deal bout "one device," citing it as the primary reason she turned away the official systems she was supposed to be using. Are you really going with "maybe she doesn't doesn't remember that very well" or "some people forget things" etc to explain why she was untruthful with her story line?

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Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Re:Horse Hockey by Tablizer · 2016-07-26 05:56 · Score: 1

If 500 eyes looked thru 30k of my emails they'd find POTENTIAL inconsistencies in my statements also that could be compiled together to make me look bad. I've had shit like that happen before when somebody was hellbent to get me fired because they wanted my position.

she changed her story several more times [on device quantity issue]

Do you have evidence of this to present?

It's now clear that that explanation was pure, deliberate fiction.

Sorry, but it's not clear to me. The scenarios I laid out are plausible. You have not logically proved them impossible. Take some logic courses.

The FBI director says that her assertions about having asked for and received such approvals were "untrue" - they never happened. It goes on and on.

It has not been proved beyond a reasonable doubt she was not given verbal approval. Verbal approval is not recorded. A criminal prosecutor would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she never had received verbal approval. That's a really tall order if you stop to think about it.
Anyhow, those are issues about State Dept. policies. State Dept. policies are NOT law.
You've presented zero evidence of your assertion that the current administration is not prosecuting due to bias. The past case history challenge the Director gave and I reminded you of still stands.
Nobody has been successfully prosecuted for 50 odd years for merely being sloppy with classified info (except perhaps a no-name dude who can't afford decent lawyers.)
O has not been in the Whitehouse for 50 years so you cannot blame the 42 year gap on him.

Is someone so spectacularly incompetent, careless, forgetful, and unable to judge the hiring of underlings to the point...
Like I said above, if an army combed thru 30k of my emails, they'd find a handful of typos and mistakes also. The problems directly attributed to H by the Director were small in number. That's within the normal purview of human error.
Perhaps she should have asked for assistance in reviewing messages.
I'm not saying she's great, but The Donald has shown no propensity for details either. At least H knows how to be mostly careful with speech. The Donald not shown he's careful with ANYTHING.
It's a choice between C- and F.
GOP should have ran Kasinich, but they flubbed it for the Carnival Barker.

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Table-ized A.I.

Wag the dog by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 10:49 · Score: 1, Interesting

The idea wasn't to help the Trump campaign - it was to demonstrate that Clinton was chosen as the nominee before any elections were held. Neither candidate is acceptable for President of the United States. Both have demonstrated a lengthy history of poor judgment, failure to take accountability for their actions, and a complete lack of moral compass. Based on recent business dealings, it appears Trump thinks "I've put too much money into this project" is an acceptable reason for not paying amounts HE AGREED to. And Clinton appears to believe she's above the employment agreements millions of Americans enter into every day - don't bring your own device is an easy rule to follow. Despite Clinton not being charged, she treated the State communications requirements like they meant nothing and disrespect for rule of law seems to be a primary motivation for the recent acts of violence. The young man who was arrested in the Baton Rouge police killings didn't fit the typical narrative - no mental illnesses or disorders, irrational hatred of religious groups, or other "radical" behavior. By all appearances, he reached a breaking point where the current situation was no longer compatible with his moral system and made the most powerful (whether it was effective is debatable) statement he could. If police officers are going to execute innocent people in cold blood, perhaps an innocent person executing a police officer would create a dialogue about the increasing militarization of our police forces.

Re: They'll say anything by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 10:53 · Score: 2, Informative

The United States bombed a Doctors Without Borders hospital while Hillary Clinton was ... oh, you meant when did Putin order hospitals bombed. Sorry, got nothing for that.

Re:Best of luck to them by MightyYar · 2016-07-24 10:53 · Score: 1

I don't think they've got much to lose here.

The "loss" here is that her campaign is essentially claiming that Russia would rather deal with Trump than Hillary.

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W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.

Dammit Trump! Enough with the Conspiracy Theories! by CajunArson · 2016-07-24 10:56 · Score: 4, Funny

That crazy Trump running around blaming the Russians for everything! That guy is completely unhinged and we need a sane establishment-connected candidate like Her Highness Hill --- [whispering] --- Uh.. wait that was Hillary who said that?

Well uh, she's obviously right. There's a vast right wing conspiracy led by the Russkies that's infiltrated all levels of the U.S. Government to stop the most qualified woman on EARTH from being coronated queen of 'Murica! I have in my hand here a list of 47 Russkie agents that are hellbent on subverting Hillary's ascendency to the throne and I propose a witchhunt to ruin their lives!! (in the name of diversity and BLMLGBTQQRSUNVAKEHG rights of course)

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AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.

How much do you believe ? by Alain+Williams · 2016-07-24 10:57 · Score: 3, Insightful

Speaking as a Brit: we have just been through a month of unscrupulous back stabbing carried out by our MPs (Members of Parliament). The Prime Minister resigned and so the Tories had to elect a new one; several put their names forwards and then huge amounts of muck was dug up, some of it completely proposterous or ridiculously overblown; the press played their part in keeping silly stories on the front pages.

We have the same thing going on in Labour: leadership election with mole hills being blown up to be the size of Everest; again the press with the Westminster mafia out to knife Jeremy Corbyn. He is loved by Labour voters country wide but hated by those in the Westminster bubble.

This story strikes me as made from the same elements: something small made out to be oh - so important. The trouble is that many voters are not able (or sufficiently interested) to see beyond the head lines.

Re:How much do you believe ? by guruevi · 2016-07-24 11:08 · Score: 2

The accusations against Clinton have been proven by the FBI with the only excuse being "she's too big to jail" and an obvious golden handshake by Bill Clinton with the AG that should've prosecuted who subsequently dropped the case.
I'm sure the Russians helped, they have their own agenda just like they would've attempted to help their cause with any other election in the world (the US does the exact same thing through the CIA as does any other world power including the UK, Germany etc).
We all know in every country, the leadership is corrupt whether it be UK, Turkey, Greece or the US. The problem is how do you get them removed without a bloody coup and subsequent civil war?

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Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Re:How much do you believe ? by whoever57 · 2016-07-24 12:13 · Score: 2

and then huge amounts of muck was dug up

And then the person who controlled GCHQ was elected. What a surprise.

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The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Re:How much do you believe ? by Applehu+Akbar · 2016-07-24 13:49 · Score: 1

"Speaking as a Brit: we have just been through a month of unscrupulous back stabbing carried out by our MPs (Members of Parliament). "
So that's why everybody in the British government has quit since the big vote? At first we were just trying to figure out whether the new Prime Minister's name was going to rhyme with "garage" or not, and next thing we knew we were dealing with all these people who are totally new to us.
Re:How much do you believe ? by Darinbob · 2016-07-24 14:58 · Score: 1

The problem is there's no one clean doing the accusations. The corrupt and dishonest are accusing others of being corrupt and dishonest. And yes, these are molehills turned into mountains. First Hillary says she doesn't like to bake cookies 24 years ago and it was instantly seen as a sign that she was wasn't worthy to be a first lady. Essentially a non-story but it was blown out of proportion and instant hate was generated which has yet to die down.
I don't like the democrats and these emails confirm some of what I don't like. But sheesh, such a minor thing about in party fighting, big deal.
Re:How much do you believe ? by SuricouRaven · 2016-07-24 22:37 · Score: 1

The excuse was a bit better than that: "Everyone does it." She isn't the first politician to be caught using a personal email account for work, and she won't be the last. There was no grounds for prosecution because her actions, though arguably unlawful, were no worse than others have gotten away with in the past - so any prosecution could only be driven by a political agenda..

Oh well by markdavis · 2016-07-24 10:59 · Score: 1

>"accused the Russian government of orchestrating the release of damaging Democratic Party records"

Oh well... the truth will set you free.

Somehow, I don't think the Russians are scared of HIllary.

Re: Oh well by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 11:18 · Score: 1

No but electing Trump will ensure that NATO will explode.
Re: Oh well by budgenator · 2016-07-25 05:16 · Score: 1

Perhaps that's a bit over due, since the demise of the Soviet Union and the rise of the EU the primary premise of NATO is a bit quaint anyway.

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Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds

Sounds plausible by fustakrakich · 2016-07-24 11:00 · Score: 2

Trump and Putin share many interests and personality traits (going by what mass media puts out). And Trump is getting a lot of questionable help from others on the outside.

It would be nice though if somebody besides the Hillary campaign said it, if just for the sake of appearance.

Still the biggest shame is seeing the election coming down to these two... the very worst of the worst. A Wall Street dominatrix vs. a demagogue

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“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”

Re:Sounds plausible by fustakrakich · 2016-07-24 11:25 · Score: 1

I'm voting for somebody else entirely, but thanks for the props anyway

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“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”

Email Smeemail by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 11:01 · Score: 5, Informative

Story about how she received bribes for allowing Russia to buy 20% of the USA uranium production. She clearly stated how she wouldn't take foreign donations to her foundation while at state, would ask for a waiver to do it if it came up, and would disclose if it happened. She took the bribe, didn't ask for a waiver, didn't disclose it, and failed to report it on her taxes and had to amend them years later after she was caught. She showed "Intent" in hiding the donations because they were bribes. This isn't even questionable campaign donations, this is direct bribes to her for approving something the State Department wouldn't normally even consider.

I'm not sure why people bring up her email scandal. As bad as it was, it wasn't taking bribes from Russia for State Department favours while she was in charge.

How is she even possibly considered for the DNC nomination after this came out?

Re:Email Smeemail by MouseR · 2016-07-24 11:40 · Score: 1

They bring it up because it sees like her private email server was more secure in the end than the DNC.
Re:Email Smeemail by quantaman · 2016-07-24 12:45 · Score: 2, Interesting

Story about how she received bribes for allowing Russia to buy 20% of the USA uranium production. She clearly stated how she wouldn't take foreign donations to her foundation while at state, would ask for a waiver to do it if it came up, and would disclose if it happened. She took the bribe, didn't ask for a waiver, didn't disclose it, and failed to report it on her taxes and had to amend them years later after she was caught. She showed "Intent" in hiding the donations because they were bribes.
Did you link to the right article? I see some bad things for her, but not the stuff you were talking about.
1) The foundation wasn't supposed to accept foreign government donations, she didn't. Though she may have taken donations from people who had connections to foreign companies with significant government ties.
2) The foundation was supposed to publicly disclose all the donations to the foundation, apparently this guy who donated, a Canadian, reported on his tax form that he made a bunch of donations that the foundation didn't publicly disclose. I don't know if this was a mistake, deliberate, or some kind of misunderstanding.
3) During this period Bill Clinton got a $500k fee to speak to a Russian bank.
4) There's nothing I saw there about hers or the foundation's taxes. I have no idea where you got the idea she hid something on her taxes.
All the bad looking stuff is Bill Clinton, who ran the foundation, accepting donations or work from people who had a connection to businesses who might be affected by the State Department.
As for "approving something the State Department wouldn't normally even consider". She was only one of multiple people who had a say on the approval. If anything her fighting it would have been the more unusual action.

I'm not sure why people bring up her email scandal.
Because it's the only scandal, where after a critical investigation, there's evidence that she really did do something wrong.
Her problem is most politicians do everything they can to avoid the appearance of impropriety. The Clintons on the other hand, Bill in particular, don't really seem to care about the appearance because they think they'll be attacked regardless.
So you get stuff like this where Bill Clinton is constantly dealing with a bunch of people he should really be avoiding. I don't think Hillary was biased when it came to doing her job, but it does lead to some fishy optics.

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I stole this Sig

doesn't matter by ooloorie · 2016-07-24 11:03 · Score: 1, Insightful

By blaming Russia, Hillary's campaign has unequivocally confirmed that these E-mails were leaked by an outside organization. It doesn't matter which outsider leaked these E-mails of for what reason. If anybody outside the Democratic party can leak these E-mails, then Hillary didn't take sufficient care of them and can't be trusted with national security secrets. Thanks, Hillary, for confirming this once again.

Re:doesn't matter by fahrbot-bot · 2016-07-24 11:18 · Score: 5, Informative

If anybody outside the Democratic party can leak these E-mails, then Hillary didn't take sufficient care of them and can't be trusted with national security secrets. Thanks, Hillary, for confirming this once again.
They were stolen from DNC systems. They contain email related to the election not national security issues.

... discuss reports that Russia had hacked into systems at the Democratic National Committee.

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It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Re:doesn't matter by Kohath · 2016-07-24 11:28 · Score: 2

So what? The message here is "Trump" -- ethics and competence don't matter because "Trump". Get used to it. "Trump" is the new all purpose justification for anything they want to do (or did in the past), regardless of ethics or laws or anything else.
Re:doesn't matter by ooloorie · 2016-07-24 12:05 · Score: 1, Troll

They were stolen from DNC systems. They contain email related to the election not national security issues.
Do you really need to have this spelled out for you? She couldn't even protect E-mails that mattered a great deal to her, namely those related to the election; E-mails that would be highly damaging if released. Furthermore, this isn't an isolated incident, it comes on top of her careless and sloppy handling of her official E-mail account. There, we don't know whether anything actually got hacked because she has deleted and destroyed any logs and information that could be used to reconstruct that, but it's a good bet that it was.
What that tells you is that Clinton simply can't be trusted: she is incapable of securing secrets, whether it is DNC secrets or national security secrets, and worse yet, she blames others for her own mistakes and tries to cover them up in a way that it's impossible to even reconstruct how much damage was done.
Re:doesn't matter by fahrbot-bot · 2016-07-24 12:24 · Score: 1, Insightful

Do you really need to have this spelled out for you? She couldn't even protect E-mails ... [remainder omitted because it's even more stupid]

Do you? The systems at the DNC do not belong to her and are not under her supervision or control. The DNC is a private organization:

The DNC is composed of the chairs and vice-chairs of each state Democratic Party committee and over 200 members elected by Democrats in all 50 states and the territories. Its chairperson is elected by the committee. It conducts fundraising to support its activities.
Jesus, can you be anymore ignorant and/or partisan.

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It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Re:doesn't matter by ooloorie · 2016-07-24 13:50 · Score: 2

Do you? The systems at the DNC do not belong to her and are not under her supervision or control. The DNC [wikipedia.org] is a private organization
Of course, they are "under her control": if she had told them to increase security, they would have done it. And, of course, the staff and experts that slosh around her campaign and the DNC are likely later to get involved in her administration.

Jesus, can you be anymore ignorant and/or partisan.
That's the question you should ask yourself. Personally, I'm not partisan, I'm simply anti-Clinton because I think she is incompetent, deeply corrupt, and dangerous.
Re:doesn't matter by Pulzar · 2016-07-24 14:27 · Score: 1

What that tells you is that Clinton simply can't be trusted: she is incapable of securing secrets, whether it is DNC secrets or national security secrets
I thought we don't like secrets around here, do we? What better president that one that has no secrets!

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Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
Re:doesn't matter by fahrbot-bot · 2016-07-24 14:33 · Score: 1

Of course, they are "under her control": if she had told them to increase security, they would have done it. And, of course, the staff and experts that slosh around her campaign and the DNC are likely later to get involved in her administration.
Clinton does not run the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz does - at least until the end of the convention. About 30 minutes ago, she announced she will be resigning because of this issue. Furthermore, the head of the Democratic Party is, at the moment, President Obama but, unless the duties for POTUS have changed and Obama has taken a Learning Annex course in computer system administration I don't know about, I'm sure he doesn't spend his days monitoring server logs at the DNC.
Certainly someone is directly responsible for not adequately protecting the DNC email systems, but it's not Clinton (or Obama). Ms. Wasserman Schultz had managerial responsibility and is owning up to the failures of this issue.
But, please continue to believe whatever fantasies you want about how things work.

I'm simply anti-Clinton because I think she is incompetent, deeply corrupt, and dangerous.
Have fun voting for Trump...

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It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Re:doesn't matter by Darinbob · 2016-07-24 15:00 · Score: 1

Hillary has no control over this. It's the Democratic National Committee that was hacked. It has zero top secret emails stored, it's not a government agency. It's bad to be hacked but it's no different than any other private club out there.
Re:doesn't matter by ooloorie · 2016-07-24 16:26 · Score: 1

Clinton does not run the Democratic National Committee
But of course! Clinton has absolutely nothing to do with the DNC, whose leader just resigned because she was colluding with Clinton to sabotage the Sanders campaign. Absolutely nothing to do with one another, oh no!

Have fun voting for Trump...
If that's what it takes to keep Clinton from becoming president, that's just what I may do. I'm still hoping that Clinton will have a stroke on the campaign trail, or that Johnson's polls keep going up further.
Re:doesn't matter by ooloorie · 2016-07-24 16:29 · Score: 1

Hillary has no control over this.
Hillary may not be technically responsible for it, but she certainly has control over it; it would have taken just one word from her or her staff to get the DNC to beef up security. After all, the main scandal is about collusion between the DNC and the Clinton campaign, and furthermore, Clinton's existing E-mail troubles mean that this makes the Democrats look even worse than they already did.
Re:doesn't matter by ooloorie · 2016-07-24 16:31 · Score: 1

I thought we don't like secrets around here, do we? What better president that one that has no secrets!
I prefer a president that voluntarily runs a transparent administration (Obama promised that but failed to deliver).
Being untransparent but having security is a distant second.
Being untransparent and leaking information to Russia and who knows where else is unacceptable.
Re:doesn't matter by fahrbot-bot · 2016-07-24 18:23 · Score: 1

I'm still hoping that Clinton will have a stroke on the campaign trail,

Nice. You're a real stand-up human being.

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It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Re:doesn't matter by ooloorie · 2016-07-24 21:42 · Score: 1

Nice. You're a real stand-up human being.
Well, we can't be all such great humanitarians as you obviously are, based on your support for Hillary and your vocal opposition to everybody else! Why, you have proven your moral superiority beyond doubt by your political positions.
In any case, Hillary has an easy way of avoiding a stroke: she shouldn't have run given her health history. But she is so obsessed with landing that job that neither national chaos nor self-preservation stop her.
Re:doesn't matter by Pulzar · 2016-07-25 04:41 · Score: 1

Being transparent is also leaking information to Russia and *everyone* else, so I fail to see the difference.
I don't expect our president to be technically capable enough to secure their own data, so they have to rely on experts. And, let's face it, there are precious few experts out there that can secure data 100% when faced with a determined opponent. Government, top-secret projects, companies, etc. have all failed to secure data over time.
When it comes to skills needed to run a country, being able to personally secure their "secret data" is very low on my list, and I would've expected it to be low for most people here.

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Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
Re:doesn't matter by budgenator · 2016-07-25 07:57 · Score: 1

I call my secrets privacy, your secrets are called obstruction of justice; if you tell my secrets you're a snitch, if I tell your secrets I'm a whistle-blower.
Wikileaks sounded like a good idea, but I always knew it was a double-edged sword, the Dems chuckled under their breath when Wikileaks became a "Let's bash Bush and America Society", now that their sights are set on outting of Hillary's and the Democrats secrets, I bet not so much.
In this day and age it's hard enough to not fall under a microscope for typical run-of-the-mill embarrassments, why tempt the fates with the bad stuff; karma is a harsh bitch.

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Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Re:doesn't matter by ooloorie · 2016-07-25 12:20 · Score: 1

When it comes to skills needed to run a country, being able to personally secure their "secret data" is very low on my list, and I would've expected it to be low for most people here.
It's very low on my list as well. What isn't low on my list, however, is the ability to pick competent experts and take their advice. Clinton failed to do that for her own email server, ignoring the experts in the federal government because she found their systems to be too inconvenient (and their systems were clearly a lot more secure than Clinton's). And apparently, the DNC is incapable of picking competent experts as well.
And setting up secure E-mail is a lot easier than all the other things Clinton needs experts for: health care, economics, immigration, taxes, infrastructure, etc. If she can't even follow sound expert advice for something as straightforward as email because it was too inconvenient for her, it's pretty likely that she is not going to follow expert advice in all those other areas either, but instead is going to make choices that serve her own interests instead.
So, yes, the inablity to select good experts and follow their advice is at the heart of Clinton's and the Democrats' failure. With email, the dysfunction is easy to spot, and even with email, they try to blame Republicans and Russia for their own screw-ups.

Awwww... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 11:06 · Score: 1

I guess being more worried about Americans reading your emails than Russians reading them wasn't quite the right choice for the Witch of the Vampire State, was it? Talk about being hoisted by your own petard. Of course, this implies the Ruskies already have everything up to and likely including our missile launch codes, but Clinton was finally embarrassed by worrying more about how she was perceived than in what she was doing.

Pot meet Kettle by fahrbot-bot · 2016-07-24 11:12 · Score: 5, Insightful

Donald Trump's son later responded, "They'll say anything to be able to win this."

Ya, *they*.

--
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .

Slashdot: Clinton Campaign mouthpiece. by bongey · 2016-07-24 11:16 · Score: 5, Informative

The slashdot editors post a Russian conspiracy plot , meanwhile there is strong evidence twitter is suppressing the entire dnc leaks topic. Are we going to start posting 9/11 was an inside job stories?

Re:Slashdot: Clinton Campaign mouthpiece. by orgelspieler · 2016-07-25 05:55 · Score: 1

I was surprised not to see that article on Slashdot, too. But I didn't submit it, did you? If not, then don't complain. This site depends on user submissions. Frankly, shutting Milo up is likely to be as successful as rerouting the Mississippi.
Re:Slashdot: Clinton Campaign mouthpiece. by bongey · 2016-07-25 06:10 · Score: 1

I did submit it, twice in fact. Mainly because I seen the topic trending at #2 and refreshed the page and it was gone.
Re:Slashdot: Clinton Campaign mouthpiece. by ripvlan · 2016-07-26 02:48 · Score: 1

oh - I thought it was FB that was suppressing DNC wikilinks. And has now been corrected - and not fully explained beyond "the automated malicious links system thought wikileaks was spam" Everyone took to twitter to complain and repost the links.

Re:Here's more credible evidence of Trump-Russia t by unixisc · 2016-07-24 11:19 · Score: 1

If Russia i.e. Putin was pro Trump, then he wouldn't have objected when Trump released that online video ad of Clinton barking like a dog, and him showing Putin laughing in response. While Putin did praise Trump, he knows that he'll face a more assertive US if Trump, rather than Clinton, succeeds Obama

Why would Putin fear Clinton? by drnb · 2016-07-24 11:28 · Score: 5, Interesting

Putin has every reason to prefer a buffoon like Trump over Clinton.

Why would Putin fear Clinton? He has beaten her repeatedly in the arena of foreign policy. What was her foreign policy experience prior to becoming secretary of state? She accompanied Bill on some trips and visited hospital and schools with the other wives while the Bill and the other actual players met elsewhere and discussed the issues and problems of the day?

I'm not trying to be sexist, women are perfectly capable at doing the job be it SOS or POTUS, but this particular person's experience was PR fluff stuff not actual foreign policy. When that crisis happened on the other side of the world and the phone rang at 3am she answered the phone and passed it to Bill saying "its for you".

She was made Secretary of State in 2008 for one and only one reason. To get the Clinton political machine behind Obama, to bind her future to his. This "machine" still controlled the Democratic party, and still does to this day as we saw with Sanders. To offer her something credible for her resume for her next attempt at the office of POTUS as a consolation promise. She was not selected because of her foreign policy experience, there was none, and her performance indicates on the job training didn't help her much.

She really is in the same league as Trump with respect to foreign policy, neither to be feared by the Russians.

Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by chipschap · 2016-07-24 11:35 · Score: 4, Interesting

Why would Putin fear Clinton? He has beaten her repeatedly in the arena of foreign policy.
That's the part I don't get. Putin has to know from experience that he can walk all over Hillary. You may call Trump clownish but the thing is that clowns are unpredictable, and in the world of international politics, unpredictable can mean dangerous. Wouldn't Putin want someone whose actions he could predict and whom he would easily out-maneuver?
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by whoever57 · 2016-07-24 12:08 · Score: 1

Why would Putin fear Clinton?
He doesn't have to fear Clinton, he merely has to prefer Trump.
Trump is (if his pronouncements are to be believed) going to be occupied getting the Mexicans to spend billions in a project that is against their own interests.

--
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by drnb · 2016-07-24 12:13 · Score: 1

Why would Putin fear Clinton?
He doesn't have to fear Clinton, he merely has to prefer Trump.

Why would he not prefer the person he already has a track record of beating? Unpredictable sounds more risky than known loser.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by Dunbal · 2016-07-24 12:15 · Score: 2, Insightful

That's the part I don't get.
There's nothing to "get" when pure bullshit is involved.

--
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by Crashmarik · 2016-07-24 12:37 · Score: 4, Insightful

Why bother with beat ? Clinton is for sale cheap.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by YooHoo2U2 · 2016-07-24 12:50 · Score: 4, Interesting

Follow the money:

"Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets," Trump's son, Donald Jr., told a real estate conference in 2008, according to an account posted on the website of eTurboNews, a trade publication. "We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Re: Why would Putin fear Clinton? by nehumanuscrede · 2016-07-24 13:09 · Score: 2

He doesn't fear Clinton.
He knows he will at least get a dialog with Trump. Clinton just wants to preserve the status quo.
Talking to Hillary is just like talking to her husband, Bill.
BTDT, would be a total waste of time to do it again.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by khallow · 2016-07-24 13:27 · Score: 1

Maybe Trump has offered a better deal to Putin than Clinton has. Or Putin is just thwarting Chinese or European machinations. If you really can't think of other possibilities here, then you aren't thinking about this at all.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by gumbi+west · 2016-07-24 13:32 · Score: 5, Interesting

Putin has stated that he wants to destabilize/topple NATO. Trump has a pretty clear goal of destabilizing/weakening/ending NATO. It's really not that hard to see.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by quenda · 2016-07-24 13:41 · Score: 3, Insightful

That's the part I don't get. Putin has to know from experience that he can walk all over Hillary.

RTFA. Even if it is Russian GRU, they have other plausible motives. It could be simple tit for tat on recent leaks that have embarrassed Putin.
There is no reason to believe they prefer Trump. The Russians would be more comfortable with the devil they know.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by drnb · 2016-07-24 14:46 · Score: 5, Interesting

Trump can't even run a business.
I think that is political BS. IF I understand things correctly each project is usually a different corporation. Different investors for different projects, one failed project won't impact other projects, a failure doesn't impact anyone personally, etc. Basically look up all the reasons you want an S-Corp or LLC rather than a sole proprietorship for your own business. I think his bankruptcies are several of these projects failing. If only several projects failed out of dozens he's doing pretty well.

... and while Trump is busy making a mess of the US economy ...
Compared to the Clinton era prosperity which was the smoke and mirrors of the Internet Bubble, which began bursting as Bill was leaving office? Like the relaxing of home loan standards that began under the Clinton administration, at their encouragement to help underdeveloped communities, that led in part to the banking crisis? Like the current economy that after how many years under Obama still needs massive stimulus and near zero interest rates to barely limp along? I'm not endorsing Trump or anything but lets not pretend the last couple Democratic administrations knew what they were doing.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by Darinbob · 2016-07-24 14:48 · Score: 1

She got the position because she essentially came in second during the democratic primaries, not because of a conspiracy.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 14:58 · Score: 1

Bernie Sanders trouble with the Democratic party has been around for decades. This is a guy who felt the Dems were too right wing for him, and he wasn't shy about saying it, for a really long time. Then, he decides he wants real power and joins the party for a few years, rebrands himself a "social democrat" instead of the straight-up "socialist" that he really is. Then, he's somehow surprised that the whole Dem machine doesn't immediately swoon over him and fall in line behind him?
Meanwhile, Clinton has paid her dues in government and been a Dem for decades.
No surprise that the DNC threw it's weight behind Clinton over Sanders.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 15:19 · Score: 1

She really is in the same league as Trump with respect to foreign policy,
Maybe. Clinton seems happy to start wars, whereas Trump arrogantly has so much confidence in his negotiating ability, that he'll try to solve every problem like that. When the only tool you have is a hammer (and that's his tool).....
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by drnb · 2016-07-24 15:21 · Score: 1

She got the position because she essentially came in second during the democratic primaries, not because of a conspiracy.
No, the Secretary of State position is not reserved for the runner up. And it usually goes to someone with actually foreign policy experience. Clinton got it for one reason, the machinery of the Democratic party was basically still loyal to Bill and by extension her. Obama was 2008's "Bernie", the insurgent candidate, he happened to do a little better than Bernie. Obama needed to heal the hard feelings and Secretary of State would look so much better on Hillary's resume than Senator. That bought the loyalty of the Clinton machine.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by drnb · 2016-07-24 15:34 · Score: 4, Insightful

Meanwhile, Clinton has paid her dues in government ...
If Hillary paid any dues it was to her husband not the government. She was a part-time Senator and a part-time Presidential candidate and then a full-time Presidential candidate. She was a Senator to get something, anything, on her resume that might sound Presidential material. Until the Senate her only experience was riding Bill's coat tails and supporting him at every turn. After the part-time Senate gig she got a full-time Secretary of State gig as a consolation prize, she wasn't really qualified and her performance shows it.

So she has Senator and Secretary of State titles on her resume, and on balance little to no positive results from either brief role. So what is her qualification other than decades of loyalty to Bill, the most influential person in the party machine?
Re: Why would Putin fear Clinton? by drnb · 2016-07-24 15:36 · Score: 1

you mean Monica answered the phone
No, Hillary answered those 3am phone calls. Monica answered the 3pm phone calls.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by Grishnakh · 2016-07-24 15:48 · Score: 1

I'm not endorsing Trump or anything but lets not pretend the last couple Democratic administrations knew what they were doing.
Bush wrecked the economy too with his various actions (including two big wars).
The simple fact is that none of the administrations (D or R) in the last 20 or so years have had any clue what they were doing. And it's not going to change for the foreseeable future either, no matter who gets elected.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by Grishnakh · 2016-07-24 15:54 · Score: 4, Insightful

Actually, it is a bit of a surprise (well, not really):
The thing about Bernie is that he could actually win the election: his polling numbers are much higher than Hillary's when you poll everyone, not just Dem voters. He was a lot like Obama in 2008: he energized the youth vote (youth apathy has long been a big problem for the Dem party), and if he was on the ticket they'd be out there in droves voting for him, and also for down-ticket Dem candidates.
This just isn't the case with Hillary: the younger people either despise her or at least have no enthusiasm whatsoever for her.
She's still likely to win (but it's not a sure thing), but only because the Rep candidate is so awful. If she were running against McCain or Romney or even Jeb, I'd fully expect her to lose.
So the only thing that's surprising is that the DNC is so dumb that they'd double down on such a lousy candidate, banking on the Republican candidate being even more horrible (and they decided to back her *long* before anyone had a clue that Trump was going to win; most people probably assumed that Jeb would).
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by whoever57 · 2016-07-24 16:07 · Score: 2, Informative

Trump can't even run a business.
I think that is political BS.

No, it's not. He ran a casino into the ground. A casino? Otherwise known as a license to print money.
Did you miss how he claimed a tax exemption that is only available to people whose income is less than $500k. His "wealth" is smoke and mirrors. His business skills are mediocre (his investments in Manhattan basically tracked the market), but what he excels at is putting over an image of a successful businessman.
No, everything Trump does is aimed at benefiting him personally, and the run for the presidency is just the same. His claims that he is self-funding his campaign are entirely false. He is actually making a profit from the campaign.

--
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by AK+Marc · 2016-07-24 17:09 · Score: 1, Informative

You do know why he didn't publicize his tax returns, right? His estimated inheritance was $150M in 2016 dollars, and his estimated wealth is $100M in 2016 dollars. He's managed to lose more than $1M a year. That's how he runs businesses, into the ground. Of course, he threatened to sue the biographer that detailed his finances, and the biographer said "sure, get on the stand in court, under oath, where the topic is your finances." Trump ran away and took back all his lies about the biographer.

Trump objects when you call him a failed businessman who has never made $1 in his life, but has just lost his father's fortune with style, but he won't show a tax return or open any books to prove it wrong.

At least fraud Hillary files her taxes and shared her returns.

Fraud Donald refuses to do that. And the Trump Worshipers can't think to ask why.

--
Learn to love Alaska
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by drnb · 2016-07-24 18:29 · Score: 4, Interesting

Trump can't even run a business.
I think that is political BS.
No, it's not. He ran a casino into the ground. A casino? Otherwise known as a license to print money.

Only casinos in areas people like to visit. Atlantic City turned out not to be so, and it wasn't just him. Again, are we talking about more than a few projects out of dozens.

Did you miss how he claimed a tax exemption that is only available to people whose income is less than $500k. His "wealth" is smoke and mirrors.
One year's annual income is not one's wealth. Wealth includes other years. Wealth includes assets you own but have not sold yet. Does he exaggerate his wealth, probably, but you haven't really shown us any real data on that subject.

His business skills are mediocre (his investments in Manhattan basically tracked the market),

Do you realize how meaningless that statement is? Of course a real estate investment tracked the market, do you think maybe the timing of an entry and an exit might be relevant? IF, and I don't know one way or the other but you seem not to either, he timed it well then that is an indication of business skill. You know, like those handful of CEOs who pay very close attention to various macroeconomic indicators and slow hiring when they say a bear market may be coming and start hiring in the depths of a bear market when those indicators start saying a bull market may be coming. If one can time things better than random guesses that is a business skill. Get back to us with your analysis of his timing, thanks for your research in advance.

No, everything Trump does is aimed at benefiting him personally ...
Hey if you are going to argue he is a narcissist I'm not one to argue against that, but what major party presidential candidate is not? The last one may have been Jimmy Carter, and he wasn't very good at the job. He is however an excellent human being and great role model outside of the political realm. Maybe that's related to his presidential shortcomings?
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by vux984 · 2016-07-24 18:41 · Score: 2

IF I understand things correctly each project is usually a different corporation. Different investors for different projects, one failed project won't impact other projects, a failure doesn't impact anyone personally, etc. Basically look up all the reasons you want an S-Corp or LLC rather than a sole proprietorship for your own business. I think his bankruptcies are several of these projects failing. If only several projects failed out of dozens he's doing pretty well.
Quite so.
However, if trump had merely stuck his inheritance money in a market ETF and then fucked off to play golf for the last 25-30 years, he be 3x-5x as wealthy as he is now. (the variance depending on just how much you believe he's actually worth now.)
25 years of 'projects', wheeling and dealing, real estate, steaks, wines, universities, casinos.
My own simple investments have done better than Trump over the last 2-3 decades.
The only difference between people like me and Trump is that Trump started out with a couple hundred million, and I didn't, so even earning wildly sub-par returns he's STILL a billionaire, and I'm not.
Really, how much success do you want to attribute to a businessman who trailed the market by THAT much?
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by whoever57 · 2016-07-24 18:47 · Score: 2, Interesting

One year's annual income is not one's wealth. Wealth includes other years.

Yeah, except that he claimed that exemption for multiple years.

Do you realize how meaningless that statement is? Of course a real estate investment tracked the market, do you think maybe the timing of an entry and an exit might be relevant?
The man was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he bought some buildings and his overall investments were no better than if he had randomly bought and sold them. He didn't beat the market in some way that isn't obvious due to "timing".

Does he exaggerate his wealth, probably, but you haven't really shown us any real data on that subject.
Wow, you really are blind to any evidence that he isn't what he says he is, aren't you? How about the fact that he hasn't published his tax returns? Clearly, he is hiding something and I doubt that it is that he is wealthier than he makes out.

Hey if you are going to argue he is a narcissist
No, I am not going to claim that he is a narcissist. I am going to claim that he is a racist bigot, who is only in the campaign to profit from it.
And, yes, there is proof that he is racist. Go back some years in his business dealings and you will see concrete evidence. But you won't do that, because you don't want to find it. It's much more comfortable to be ignorant.

--
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by Mashiki · 2016-07-24 18:49 · Score: 2

No, it's not. He ran a casino into the ground. A casino? Otherwise known as a license to print money.

Guess you don't realize that casino's aren't a license to print money, but in many cases operate on a thin profit margin. And the more casino's there are, the more that margin thins out. Let's look at Ontario for example: All the casino's here are operated by the provincial government. Around 70% of them are money losing ventures because they've built so many that they've created an artificial glut.
Welcome to business 101.

--
Om, nomnomnom...
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by drnb · 2016-07-24 18:51 · Score: 1

You do know why he didn't publicize his tax returns, right? His estimated inheritance was $150M in 2016 dollars, and his estimated wealth is $100M in 2016 dollars. He's managed to lose more than $1M a year. That's how he runs businesses, into the ground.
You assume he's not spending millions on a excessive indulgent lifestyle beyond his income. You know, like having your own friggin airliner. Earn 4 and spend 5 and that's a loss of 1 each year, yet in such a scenario someone still made 4. He may be from the school of "you can't take it with you". Or to quote my graduate microeconomics professor, the most efficient lifestyle is to die unexpectedly of natural causes in old age as your are spending your last dollar.

Lets try to divorce this concept from the "Trump" name, that may cloud judgment. Want a better example of business failure, the pro athlete that is broke 5 to 10 years after they retire. Not the ex-athlete that still has $100M of $150M left, especially the ex-athlete at 70 years of age. For the later case you need to know what their goal was.

Again, is there any evidence that his bankruptcies are not just a few failed projects out of dozens?

Lying about his wealth is a pretty meaningless debate. What billionaire doesn't, their "wealth" is how they measure "success". Do you think Bill Clinton is measuring the success of the Clinton Foundation any differently? OK, maybe getting Hillary into the White House, his "debt" paid and her off his back may be a measure of his success too.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by Z00L00K · 2016-07-24 19:01 · Score: 1

Putin loves the current situation regardless of whom gets nominated. It's already revealed that the election system is broken, and therein lies the win for Putin.

--
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by drnb · 2016-07-24 19:04 · Score: 1

Really, how much success do you want to attribute to a businessman who trailed the market by THAT much?
Wealth doesn't indicate success. Show us his ROI. A person can be quite successful and still spend more than they made due to an excessive indulgent lifestyle. A friggin airliner with your name on it may suggest such a lifestyle. Another poster said he turned $150M into $100M. Well if he led a super indulgent lifestyle from age 20-something to age 70 and still has $100M left he might know what he is doing.

As I suggested to another poster, divorce this concept from "Trump". Think anonymous pro athletes. One is broke 5-10 years after retirement. The other turned $150M into $100M while living an indulgent life making it to age 70. Do you think the later ex-athlete a business failure? What good is getting a 3X market return by age 70 if you had no fun, just a big number on a bank account?

More data needed on the "business failure" claim. Maybe he is, but a few failed projects over dozens is not evidence. And neither is only having $100M at age 70.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by bloodhawk · 2016-07-24 19:04 · Score: 1

Why would Putin fear Clinton?
It isn't about fearing Clinton, it is about the insane mess Trump will create of the west if Trump wins, from NATO Chaos to trade wars it has the potential to play big time into Russia's favour or at least be an amusing thing to watch if you aren't tied at the crotch to the west.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by vux984 · 2016-07-24 19:10 · Score: 1

The other turned $150M into $100M while living an indulgent life making it to age 70. Do you think the later ex-athlete a business failure?
A business failure? Yes. Absolutely.
Successful at life? Also yes. Absolutely.
If you want to tell me Trump has led a pretty fantastic life, sure, I won't argue that. But don't tell me he's a great *businessman*. He's pretty mediocre at business, at best.
Re: Why would Putin fear Clinton? by Rakarra · 2016-07-24 19:13 · Score: 1

There's a tower in New York with his name on it.
You know, something that you'll never come close to accomplishing.
And this is... a worthy accomplishment? That is actually something we should teach our children to emulate?
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by Rakarra · 2016-07-24 19:14 · Score: 2

That was a shame, about Sanders. Not counting those bullshit "superdelegates" he was holding his own extremely well with actual, real voters. .
Then they should have voted for him.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by drnb · 2016-07-24 19:25 · Score: 1

One year's annual income is not one's wealth. Wealth includes other years.
Yeah, except that he claimed that exemption for multiple years.
Again, meaningless. If he sells only $450K of assets in each of those years he would still qualify. Does that tell is anything about assets. People are taxed on gains, not the value of assets held.

Do you realize how meaningless that statement is? Of course a real estate investment tracked the market, do you think maybe the timing of an entry and an exit might be relevant?
The man was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he bought some buildings and his overall investments were no better than if he had randomly bought and sold them. He didn't beat the market in some way that isn't obvious due to "timing".
Statements about his wealth prove no such thing. What did he invest? What was the return? That fact that he only has $100M left at age 70 may simply indicate an excessive indulgent lifestyle where his spending exceeds income. With a friggin airliner with his name on it that is a possibility.

Does he exaggerate his wealth, probably, but you haven't really shown us any real data on that subject.
Wow, you really are blind to any evidence that he isn't what he says he is, aren't you? How about the fact that he hasn't published his tax returns? Clearly, he is hiding something and I doubt that it is that he is wealthier than he makes out.

Hey if you are going to argue he is a narcissist
Dude, I am not a Trump supporter. I am however someone who expects both parties to lie about each other and the media to get the story wrong and the internet to be flush with incomplete data. Again, if you want to claim he is a business failure you need more than statements about his wealth. You need info on what he invested and what his returns were (ROI). You need to indicate what percentage of his projects went bankrupt, what percentage of his investments did they represent, etc (a few high risk projects in a portfolio are not unreasonable if they represent a small percentage of overall investments). That fact that he has less money than 50 years ago, that a few project went bankrupt, doesn't proven he is a bad businessman. He may be, but the preceding is not evidence of it.

Again, try to think of this in a less emotional context. As I mentioned to others lets go with pro athletes. One if flat broke 5 to 10 years after retirement. One has $100M of $150M left at age 70. Is the later a bad businessman or did spending exceed income? And is only having $100M left at age 70 a bad thing if you had a lot of fun in those 50 years?
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by drnb · 2016-07-24 19:28 · Score: 2

Why would Putin fear Clinton?
It isn't about fearing Clinton, it is about the insane mess Trump will create of the west if Trump wins, from NATO Chaos to trade wars it has the potential to play big time into Russia's favour or at least be an amusing thing to watch if you aren't tied at the crotch to the west.
Congress can stop any of those things. And IF Trump wins we will likely have the most obstructionist do nothing Congress ever. Not only will Democrats oppose anything silly but many Republicans will probably join in since Trump is fairly well hated among the Republican establishment. He effectively has little to no base of support in Congress. It'll just be 4 years of embarrassing speeches.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by drnb · 2016-07-24 19:33 · Score: 1

The other turned $150M into $100M while living an indulgent life making it to age 70. Do you think the later ex-athlete a business failure?
A business failure? Yes. Absolutely. Successful at life? Also yes. Absolutely.
If you want to tell me Trump has led a pretty fantastic life, sure, I won't argue that. But don't tell me he's a great *businessman*. He's pretty mediocre at business, at best.
Again, you can't judge business success by wealth itself, only by ROI. What amounts did he invest, what returns did he get. If the later athlete made $4M from investments but spent $5M on lifestyle he still made $4M but lost $1M each year. That's not a business failure.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by AK+Marc · 2016-07-24 19:39 · Score: 1

Lets try to divorce this concept from the "Trump" name, that may cloud judgment. Want a better example of business failure, the pro athlete that is broke 5 to 10 years after they retire. Not the ex-athlete that still has $100M of $150M left, especially the ex-athlete at 70 years of age. For the later case you need to know what their goal was.
An athlete stops working. Trump claims to have made millions last year. Troy Aikman is still making money. He has his name on some dealerships (no idea if he owns them, or just licenses his name, but I suspect he owns them). He works on commentating and such. At best, Trump spends more than he makes. At worst, he loses much, and lies to us about it. We can't tell which lie he's telling, and how big the lie is, because he's the first candidate in a long time to not release is tax records.

Again, is there any evidence that his bankruptcies are not just a few failed projects out of dozens?
Nope. It's just more proof of his lies. He's a man of his word, unless he owes you money and sues the government to keep you from collecting. That's the piece the Trump-worshippers seem to miss. Bankruptcy is suing the government for protection from people you are breaking your promise to. From someone who has claimed his word is good. Many times.

--
Learn to love Alaska
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by drnb · 2016-07-24 20:09 · Score: 1

Lets try to divorce this concept from the "Trump" name, that may cloud judgment. Want a better example of business failure, the pro athlete that is broke 5 to 10 years after they retire. Not the ex-athlete that still has $100M of $150M left, especially the ex-athlete at 70 years of age. For the later case you need to know what their goal was.
An athlete stops working.
No, they change sources of income. They begin their own investment/business plans once they retire, analogous to beginning one's own investment/business plans once one receives an inheritance, wins the lottery, etc.

Trump claims to have made millions last year. Troy Aikman is still making money. He has his name on some dealerships (no idea if he owns them, or just licenses his name, but I suspect he owns them). He works on commentating and such. At best, Trump spends more than he makes.
And that is a lifestyle choice not a business failure.

At worst, he loses much, and lies to us about it. We can't tell which lie he's telling, and how big the lie is, because he's the first candidate in a long time to not release is tax records.
OK, we're fairly close. I also keep open the option that he makes money but does so in a politically incorrect way. The tax returns somehow indicating he employed suppliers known to use child labor to make neckties, shirts, etc.

Again, is there any evidence that his bankruptcies are not just a few failed projects out of dozens?
Nope. It's just more proof of his lies. He's a man of his word, unless he owes you money and sues the government to keep you from collecting. That's the piece the Trump-worshippers seem to miss. Bankruptcy is suing the government for protection from people you are breaking your promise to. From someone who has claimed his word is good. Many times.
Bankruptcies are failures of a plan, like the Russian reset, leading from behind in Libya, Syria in numerous ways, etc. Failures of career business people end up in court, failure of career politicians don't. Yet failures are failures.
Re: Why would Putin fear Clinton? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 20:20 · Score: 1

Those are serious claims with no proof. Asking others to pay their fair share for their own protection is hardly trying to dismantle an organization. In fact it could easily be argued it would strengthen it. If you can protect yourself better than that gives you a better chance if beating back Putin waiting fir the Cavalry to arrive.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by vux984 · 2016-07-24 20:22 · Score: 1

Again, you can't judge business success by wealth itself, only by ROI
I'm not judging the business, I'm judging the man. The ROI on the the business maybe for 4M, but the ROI on the MAN is -1M.
Its meaningless to draw arbitrary boxes and look at them in isolation... what's the total package?
A business that *needlessly* flies around its executives on private jets. seats them in gold gilt chairs, and is wasting money (see definition of "needlessly").
A businessman that owns a business that is run responsibly, who then flies himself around on privates jets, gold gilt chairs... etc... is the same thing at the end of the day.
What are you suggesting? A person who is really great at making and managing money... until its his?
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by drnb · 2016-07-24 20:46 · Score: 1

What I am saying is that there is no real evidence he is a bad businessman. He may be, but if its just a few bankruptcies over dozens of projects that is not evidence, nor is spending 1/3 of an inheritance over 50 years. I'm open to the idea but all that seems to be offered is political BS.

If you want to argue he makes poor lifestyle choices, fine. I see a lot of wasteful excess in my opinion too, then again I don't have that sort of money and maybe if I did I'd spend in excess too. Maybe most people would. I learned to fly a Cessna when I was younger, that was not necessary, it was a personal indulgence. If a $150M got dropped on me maybe I would have went for something bigger, not sure if I'd put my name on it though. On second thought, not bigger, a WW2 Mustang. Yeah, I'd probably do that. Or maybe an F4U Corsair. Wait, $150M, both. Oh hell, lets add the P-38 Lightning. Have I spent $50M yet?
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by Maritz · 2016-07-24 22:42 · Score: 2

They know that Trump is a buffoon and a megalomaniacal psychopath. They know he will do things that undermine the US and the West. That's why they want him in.

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I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by johanw · 2016-07-24 22:46 · Score: 1

He probably expects to be able to do buisiness with Trump, while Hillary might start yet another war in the Ukraine, Syria or Turkey (or in all of them).
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by Maritz · 2016-07-24 22:47 · Score: 1

Casinos make money out of nothing other than people's fucking stupidity. If you can't operate one, you're a fucking retard. 101.

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I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by johanw · 2016-07-24 22:48 · Score: 1

> Trump can't even run a business
That's why your bank account is so much larger than his?
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-25 00:07 · Score: 1

Russians invest in NY/NJ real-estate, news at 11. Or not news, since this has been a trend for the last several decades.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by Mashiki · 2016-07-25 00:13 · Score: 1

Casinos make money out of nothing other than people's fucking stupidity. If you can't operate one, you're a fucking retard. 101.
I'm now awaiting your casino. I'm sure you can show everyone how it's done and not have it as a failing venture when there's an over-abundance and the economy hasn't been doing shit hot for the last 8 years. Oh and I'm guessing you're american, so you'll be doing that on a declining wage front.

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Om, nomnomnom...
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by coofercat · 2016-07-25 00:20 · Score: 1

My guess would be that Putin thinks Trump will fuck up the US more than Clinton will. A fucked up US is weaker on the world stage, and thus Russia appears stronger.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by CmdrTamale · 2016-07-25 00:42 · Score: 1

off to play golf for the last 25-30 years, he be 3x-5x as wealthy as he is now
25 years of 'projects', wheeling and dealing, real estate, steaks, wines, universities, casinos.
Sounds like he has had a lot of fun. Golf is kind of boring by comparison.
He appears to still have more money than I know how to spend.
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Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness.- Thomas Paine
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by swillden · 2016-07-25 00:48 · Score: 2

The man was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he bought some buildings and his overall investments were no better than if he had randomly bought and sold them. He didn't beat the market in some way that isn't obvious due to "timing".
Worse, actually. If he'd put the money into an S&P 500 index fund he'd be much wealthier today.

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Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by aquacrayfish · 2016-07-25 00:50 · Score: 1

That's the part I don't get. Putin has to know from experience that he can walk all over Hillary. You may call Trump clownish but the thing is that clowns are unpredictable, and in the world of international politics, unpredictable can mean dangerous. Wouldn't Putin want someone whose actions he could predict and whom he would easily out-maneuver?
Or, perhaps, he prefers Clinton because Putin is classic style of Russian leader who wants to take down his enemies. He sees the U.S. as an enemy, perhaps the most powerful and/or richest. And, just perhaps, maybe he thinks Trump is good at self-combustion. I have no idea if he respects Clinton, but at the very least there aren't any outward signs of her changing America's course drastically (your opinion of America's direction being whatever).
Whatever you think of Putin, dumb isn't a word I would use. My choice of words would be 'calculating.' Regardless, I agree with most of what you say here.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by aquacrayfish · 2016-07-25 01:00 · Score: 1

And IF Trump wins we will likely have the most obstructionist do nothing Congress ever.
Wow, that's tough to envision. An obstructionist Congress. That differs from the current version how exactly?

Not only will Democrats oppose anything silly but many Republicans will probably join in since Trump is fairly well hated among the Republican establishment. He effectively has little to no base of support in Congress. It'll just be 4 years of embarrassing speeches.
I'm not viewing this as a positive experience. I'm not sure how anyone can, and the argument is pretty tiring. If you're leaning Democrat, I'm not seeing the value of a Trump presidency. If you lean Republican, I don't know how the experience over the last 8 years makes you yearn for an obstructionist Congress led by someone by your own account you don't respect. If you lean independent, why on EARTH would you vote for Clinton or Trump? I mean, is there value in picking a winner I'm not aware of? Isn't voting whom you want into office who makes a difference you would like to see a better option?
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by oh_my_080980980 · 2016-07-25 01:04 · Score: 1

Don't you love anonymous trolls. Thanks for confirming what the emails said: that the DNC actively worked against Bernie Sanders and promoted Hillary Clinton.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by budgenator · 2016-07-25 01:20 · Score: 1

I always figured that making Hillary SoS and giving her the shot at POTUS in 2016 was the reward for not putting up too much of a fight to run against Obama in 2008; Bernie never stood a chance, the deal was done 8 years ago. The Democratic machine probably didn't want Hillary getting into direct confrontation with Palin, a cat fight might alienate Woman voters for years.

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Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by will_die · 2016-07-25 01:25 · Score: 1

If she becomes President she could take away that Overcharge button she gave to the Russians year ago.
That thing is rather powerful with it they have invaded the Ukraine and basically annexed parts of it, they have tried to provoke NATO members, and have attacked forces friendly to the US and opposing forces friendly to Russia and had the US President smile and accept it.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by AthanasiusKircher · 2016-07-25 01:25 · Score: 1

Trump can't even run a business.
I think that is political BS. IF I understand things correctly each project is usually a different corporation. Different investors for different projects, one failed project won't impact other projects, a failure doesn't impact anyone personally, etc. Basically look up all the reasons you want an S-Corp or LLC rather than a sole proprietorship for your own business. I think his bankruptcies are several of these projects failing. If only several projects failed out of dozens he's doing pretty well.
All of that said, if Trump had merely cashed out his portion of his father's inheritance in the mid-1970s and invested it in index funds, he'd have more money today.
This isn't surprising as most CEOs (and even most fund managers) have trouble beating the market consistently. But still -- Trump's amount of business success is hardly noteworthy, given the assets and company already put in place that he inherited. He could have had more money if he just sat back and did nothing for the past 40 years.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by will_die · 2016-07-25 01:31 · Score: 1

Egand not this again, it has been proven false so many times that the you have to be rather stupid to keep posting it.
The money amount is wrong, the time frame is wrong, they ignored taxes, they ignored that he gave away and splits of that money.
Start thinking for yourself! What you are cut/pasting says he is worth $100M yet he is called a billionaire that should make something click that what you are being feed is incorrect.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-25 02:38 · Score: 1

We did. He won everywhere where the vote was counted by hand.
In a dozen states, evidence of a fractional counting algo is very clear -- as the total vote count goes up, HRC's lead goes up in a smooth line.
Bernie had a million more individual donors than Hillary had. He filled stadiums and arenas from coast to coast while she drew more protesters than supporters. Trust your lying eyes or trust the vote-counting machines. Up to you.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by ndogg · 2016-07-25 02:38 · Score: 1

I don't think that Putin fears Clinton, but I think that Putin is somewhat enamored with Trump. Trump has already praised Putin's politics, and Putin is probably pretty bitter with Obama for the past eight years, and likely sees that bad relationship continuing under Clinton since she was his Secretary of State.

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// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Re: Why would Putin fear Clinton? by KenHansen · 2016-07-25 02:38 · Score: 1

He doesn't fear Clinton.
Why should he? What is she going to do, "reset" relations with Russia (again)?
Re: Why would Putin fear Clinton? by KenHansen · 2016-07-25 02:50 · Score: 1

When that crisis happened on the other side of the world and the phone rang at 3am she answered the phone and passed it to Bill saying "its for you".
That's so cute, you have both of them sleeping together at 3 am...
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by Archangel+Michael · 2016-07-25 02:53 · Score: 1

Bernie can't win the election. Too many people in the middle of the road wouldn't vote for him

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Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-25 02:59 · Score: 1

Don't underestimate the number of people that vote for whoever is "first" stupid though that may be. With the superdelegates in Hillary's tank from the get go that certainly influenced some voters. How many? Nobody can say but the number is certainly non-zero. I totally get that these are private orgs and can handle the nominating process however they see fit but having superdelegates declare before the convention is just another thumb on the scale, and one that should be eliminated.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by drnb · 2016-07-25 03:03 · Score: 1

My guess would be that Putin thinks Trump will fuck up the US more than Clinton will. A fucked up US is weaker on the world stage, and thus Russia appears stronger.
A Trump administration would have the most obstructionist Congress in US history, it would be bipartisan obstructionism. He has no loyal base among the Republican congressional body to get anything "stupid" through. A Trump administration would be four years of embarrassing statements with little to no legislation getting done.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by drnb · 2016-07-25 03:19 · Score: 1

Wow, that's tough to envision. An obstructionist Congress. That differs from the current version how exactly?
It would be a bipartisan effort.

I'm not viewing this as a positive experience.
No one is claiming a Trump administration would be, merely that he won't be able to get "stupid" things through Congress. He has no loyal base to count on. It will be four years of embarrassing statement from the White House and little more. Not the rise of some sort of dictatorship.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by LynnwoodRooster · 2016-07-25 03:25 · Score: 1

No. Putin knows the world "needs" two superpowers to get to the old balance. Russia wants to be - can be - one of them. And the US should be the other - the old, historical superpowers that balanced each other for 40 years. But with Hillary! as President, no one will give the US any attention at all, consider it a reasonable foil. For Russia to become ascendant as a superpower again, it needs someone who also appears a superpower - and that's NOT the US under Hillary!

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Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by drnb · 2016-07-25 03:27 · Score: 1

>All of that said, if Trump had merely cashed out his portion of his father's inheritance in the mid-1970s and invested it in index funds, he'd have more money today.
You assume a modest lifestyle. Knowing he had such a bankroll and spending $1M more a year than his income would explain turning $150M into $100M over 50 years. You can not demonstrate business failure by accumulated wealth. Such wealth is largely a factor of 50'ish years of lifestyle choices, not necessarily business decision. To show business success/failure you need to know what he invested and what his return was.
Re: Why would Putin fear Clinton? by drnb · 2016-07-25 03:29 · Score: 1

When that crisis happened on the other side of the world and the phone rang at 3am she answered the phone and passed it to Bill saying "its for you".
That's so cute, you have both of them sleeping together at 3 am...
Its actually her narrative not mine.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by drnb · 2016-07-25 03:39 · Score: 1

The man was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he bought some buildings and his overall investments were no better than if he had randomly bought and sold them. He didn't beat the market in some way that isn't obvious due to "timing".
Worse, actually. If he'd put the money into an S&P 500 index fund he'd be much wealthier today.
Assuming he spent his money modestly. An extravagant lifestyle that exceeds income by $1M a year for 50 years would turn $150M into $100M. And by "overspending" at that rate its hard to argue it was a "bad" lifestyle choice, only spending 1/3 of an inheritance on the lifestyle. And then there is a divorce or three.

If you want to judge business success and not lifestyle choices you need to show what he invested and what his returns were.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by MachineShedFred · 2016-07-25 03:43 · Score: 1

You're assuming that Putin, or the Russians in general, had anything to do with this. This could easily be scapegoating on the part of the DNC trying to spin a very embarrassing document leak into some kind of "our candidate is so strong that the Russians are afraid of her" horseshit.
They're probably laughing about the whole thing, waiting to see which idiot they're going to have to deal with come January.

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Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by destinyland · 2016-07-25 04:00 · Score: 1

Um, what would you consider to be a qualification?

I mean, it seems like a good answer would be "Six years as secretary of state, plus eight more years of meeting world leaders as First Lady -- and then another six years as a U.S. Senator." Your response is "Nah, that's not experience....."

So what is?
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by rahvin112 · 2016-07-25 04:10 · Score: 1

The superdelegates don't vote until the convention. This is why many people felt it was entirely unfair of the press to be counting votes that hadn't voted yet.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by whoever57 · 2016-07-25 04:51 · Score: 1

Statements about his wealth prove no such thing. What did he invest? What was the return? That fact that he only has $100M left at age 70 may simply indicate an excessive indulgent lifestyle where his spending exceeds income. With a friggin airliner with his name on it that is a possibility.
Earlier, you argued that his income was low because he had held onto assets and not sold them. Now you say that he has spent his money. Guess what, to spend the money on yourself, it has to be declared as income first.
Please, be internally consistent in your arguments. Otherwise you look just like another Trump supporter who is blind to reality.
Trump: America's Erdogan!

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The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by Grishnakh · 2016-07-25 05:02 · Score: 1

They'll vote for him sooner than they'll vote for Trump.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by avandesande · 2016-07-25 05:31 · Score: 1

Actually Atlantic City was the only place to go for gambling on the east coast. Eventually the surrounding states wanted in on the action and opened their own casinos. That's pretty much why there has been so many failures there.

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love is just extroverted narcissism
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by vux984 · 2016-07-25 05:57 · Score: 1

Sounds like he has had a lot of fun. Golf is kind of boring by comparison.
Its something he enjoys. I'm not saying he had to be 'boring'.
And I'm not suggesting that he was wrong to do what he enjoys... he's certainly lived the life he wants to live, and that's fine, even something admirable in its own way. (perhaps not his life choices in particular, but the notion making the most of life is.)
Its not a demonstration of a fantastic business acumen.

He appears to still have more money than I know how to spend.
So does Paris Hilton. I guess she's a fantastic business woman?
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by drnb · 2016-07-25 06:10 · Score: 1

Um, what would you consider to be a qualification?
Having been a chief executive, say a governor, would be a good meaningful bit of experience.

I mean, it seems like a good answer would be "Six years as secretary of state,

Four not six, but more importantly its not having the job title its actually performing well in the role. She did not.

plus eight more years of meeting world leaders as First Lady

Meeting in a social context, before being taken to go visit a school, hospital, etc with the other world leader's wife for fluff PR photos; while Bill and the other real leaders went off to make deals and solve problems without her.

and then another six years as a U.S. Senator."
Actually eight, but that was part time work. She spent a lot of that Senate time positioning and running for the Presidency. And again we have the issue of having the title but not excelling at the job

Your response is "Nah, that's not experience....." So what is?
More than holding a job title, making good decision and being successful in implementing one's goals. She failed on that metric, making things worse during her tenure.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by drnb · 2016-07-25 06:15 · Score: 1

Statements about his wealth prove no such thing. What did he invest? What was the return? That fact that he only has $100M left at age 70 may simply indicate an excessive indulgent lifestyle where his spending exceeds income. With a friggin airliner with his name on it that is a possibility.
Earlier, you argued that his income was low because he had held onto assets and not sold them.
No I argued that income does not demonstrate wealth. That wealth includes assets not being sold. Please go re-read.

Now you say that he has spent his money.
No, I say that excessive spending can result in a decline in wealth, not necessarily failed business investments. Please go re-read.

Guess what, to spend the money on yourself, it has to be declared as income first.
Wasn't it, 50'ish years ago when he inherited it?

Please, be internally consistent in your arguments.
Good advice, try practicing it yourself.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by shutdown+-p+now · 2016-07-25 06:49 · Score: 1

This is far more true for someone like Cruz, who was the next most likeliest choice for Republican candidate.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by FirstOne · 2016-07-25 07:11 · Score: 1

Trump can't even run a business.

I think that is political BS. IF I understand things correctly each project is usually a different corporation.
He can't, Trump is a serial abuser of both bankruptcy law, and the suppliers he contracts to perform work.
This is a typical Example of one his corps abusing a supplier, rather than pay supplier what they owe, they resort to a form of extortion (ever increasing legal fees to collect a debt). And that is not the only Forum about Trump and Rcih assholes like him
We really don't need a person, (unrepentant serial abuser), like Trump as Commander in Chief.
.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by amicusNYCL · 2016-07-25 07:12 · Score: 1

Then they should have voted for him.
Almost as many people voted for Sanders as voted for Trump. Millions of people did vote for him, a relatively unknown outsider. If he had received the same level of party support that Clinton had (which all candidates should have, if they are going to follow their own rules), and if the party had decided to do things like hold more debates like he was asking for, and if the media had covered him as anything but a fringe candidate, then maybe more people would have decided that he represents their interests more than Clinton does. But we'll never know what would have happened, because the DNC was pushing the Clinton narrative the entire time and had their friends in the media doing the same.

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"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by CaptainLard · 2016-07-25 07:12 · Score: 1

Like the relaxing of home loan standards that began under the Clinton administration, at their encouragement to help underdeveloped communities, that led in part to the banking crisis? Like the current economy that after how many years under Obama still needs massive stimulus and near zero interest rates to barely limp along?

Sooo.... its a good thing republican administrations saw the collapse coming and made such smart decisions and have great policy ideas to prevent and fix recessions? I'm not endorsing Hillary but lets not pretend the last couple republican administrations knew what they were doing.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by CaptainLard · 2016-07-25 07:19 · Score: 1

Guess you don't realize that casino's aren't a license to print money, but in many cases operate on a thin profit margin. And the more casino's there are, the more that margin thins out.

So your argument is that by focusing so much on casinos, trump is a bad investor? Agreed. My favorite stat is if he'd just put all his dad's money in an S&P500 index fund he'd be worth more about 2x what most of the generous outside estimates put his wealth at.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by CaptainLard · 2016-07-25 07:24 · Score: 1

The thing about Bernie is that he could actually win the election: his polling numbers are much higher than Hillary's when you poll everyone, not just Dem voters.

If only Hillary hadn't ended up with ~25% more votes than Bernie (and trump btw). And as we all know, primary voters tend toward the more extreme ends of the party...
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by tburkhol · 2016-07-25 07:26 · Score: 1

You assume a modest lifestyle. Knowing he had such a bankroll and spending $1M more a year than his income would explain turning $150M into $100M over 50 years. You can not demonstrate business failure by accumulated wealth.
I don't care if his results are due to irresponsible business decisions or an extravagant, indulgent lifestyle. Neither of those are traits I want in a politician with the keys to my tax dollars.
You keep making this argument that he might be the great businessman he claims to be (except no one can ever know, because you need all kind of financial reports that he's not legally required to release), but that he's just really irresponsible in his personal life. You're not helping.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by Viewsonic · 2016-07-25 07:58 · Score: 1

Clinton era prosperity was real. It's in the history books. Trying to disclaim it at this point is petty. There isn't much else to add other than you're wrong. Want to argue? Go grab a time machine and have at it.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by drnb · 2016-07-25 09:08 · Score: 1

Clinton era prosperity was real. It's in the history books. Trying to disclaim it at this point is petty. There isn't much else to add other than you're wrong. Want to argue? Go grab a time machine and have at it.
"The dot-com bubble was a historic speculative bubble covering roughly 1997–2000 ... The collapse of the bubble took place during 1999–2001."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Nasdaq showing the fake stock market prosperity collapsing at the end of the Clinton administration:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

There is your history, there is the fake prosperity.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by drnb · 2016-07-25 09:21 · Score: 1

Like the relaxing of home loan standards that began under the Clinton administration, at their encouragement to help underdeveloped communities, that led in part to the banking crisis? Like the current economy that after how many years under Obama still needs massive stimulus and near zero interest rates to barely limp along?
Sooo.... its a good thing republican administrations saw the collapse coming and made such smart decisions and have great policy ideas to prevent and fix recessions? I'm not endorsing Hillary but lets not pretend the last couple republican administrations knew what they were doing.
Who said they did? I was merely countering the false meme of Clinton prosperity and good economic governance.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by drnb · 2016-07-25 09:28 · Score: 1

You assume a modest lifestyle. Knowing he had such a bankroll and spending $1M more a year than his income would explain turning $150M into $100M over 50 years. You can not demonstrate business failure by accumulated wealth.
I don't care if his results are due to irresponsible business decisions or an extravagant, indulgent lifestyle. Neither of those are traits I want in a politician with the keys to my tax dollars. You keep making this argument that he might be the great businessman ...
No, I keep arguing that no one has shown evidence he is a bad businessman. I argue that wealth is not a metric to judge business success by. Are his bankruptcies more than a few failures out of dozens of projects? Are his ROI numbers terrible? Still patiently waiting ...

If you want to say his lifestyle is wasteful, fine, I have no problem with that. Just don't conflate that with being a business failure. Those are two very different thing.

Likewise if you want to argue he is a bully, a narcissist, fine, no problem. But again, those are also very different things from a business failure.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by AK+Marc · 2016-07-25 09:53 · Score: 1

Start thinking for yourself! What you are cut/pasting says he is worth $100M yet he is called a billionaire that should make something click that what you are being feed is incorrect.
Technically he failed to disagree with the person who said he was worth $100M. Trump threatened a suit, then abandoned it when he realized he'd have to prove his worth, which is not much. His companies "control" billions, and he controls them. But he doesn't have much in his own name, and doesn't take income from his businesses. He uses them for personal expense, then treats it as a company expense. That's called embezzlement. And Trump knows that he'll be revealing multiple felonies if he ever fully opened his books. That's why he doesn't.

He's called a billionaire because he "owns" $10B of real estate. Never mind that it's mortgaged 100%, so the net value approaches zero.

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Learn to love Alaska
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by Nehmo · 2016-07-25 11:07 · Score: 1

I'm now awaiting your casino. I'm sure you can show everyone how it's done and not have it as a failing venture when there's an over-abundance and the economy hasn't been doing shit hot for the last 8 years. Oh and I'm guessing you're american, so you'll be doing that on a declining wage front.
I never ran a big legal casino, but when I was a kid, I ran a poker game. It does, indeed, make lots of money. I imagine a casino is just scaling up the operation.
Basically, the house takes a cut. Eventually, this amounts to taking everything.
Modern casinos, like Trump's, prey on dumb people's dreams. It's not ethical. If you want to see the effects, look at the faces of people leaving casinos.

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(||) Nehmo (||)
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by Nehmo · 2016-07-25 11:22 · Score: 1

When he was pouring money into luxury fixtures for Atlantic City casinos, the Wall Street Journal ran an article showing how dumb this was. (I don't have access to their archives.) The point is that, in financial circles, Trump was known to be dumb at business long ago. The low-brow public sees something different, though.

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(||) Nehmo (||)
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by whoever57 · 2016-07-25 12:01 · Score: 1

Here you go. The explanation laid out for you.
TL;DR: revenge.

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The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by drnb · 2016-07-25 14:00 · Score: 1

Here you go. The explanation laid out for you.
TL;DR: revenge.
Well, that is why he dislikes her, there isn't much in the way of his fearing her. Not quite the same thing.
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by whoever57 · 2016-07-25 15:33 · Score: 1

It was your contention that Putin would not fear Clinton. I pointed out that Putin merely has to prefer Trump. Essentially, you are arguing for a strawman now.

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The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Re:Why would Putin fear Clinton? by DarthVain · 2016-07-26 04:04 · Score: 1

Agreed. Politics aside, I found all the people making a point of Trump's "Bankruptcies" either A) stupid and do not understand what that word actually means, or B) simply using it in a disingenuous manner in the assumption that their audience really doesn't know what it means.
I don't think at any time Trump ever declared *personal* bankruptcy, but rather one of the very many corporations he either runs or has associations with. Looking at the business and corporate world, this isn't even all that uncommon. People always seems to be spouting that entrepreneurs can't be afraid of "failure", and that each leads to more opportunities and growth etc...
What it actually means is protection from creditors for a corporate identify while financial restructuring is made to realign the business into a more successful one. I think one of the more notable ones were during the auto crisis. Guess what, they are still around making billions.
That said, on the actual topic, I doubt Russia cares either way. In fact were I to guess I think they would likely prefer Clinton, in that they already pretty much know what she will do, and probably doubt she would do anything rash (i.e. just the status quo). Whereas with Trump, who the hell knows what his reaction might be to anything (i.e. much more of a wildcard)? So simply from a perspective of predicted responses to intended actions I think they would much prefer Clinton. Also she's a woman so she can't be tough right? (jk, but perhaps from the largely male perspective of Russian politics maybe).

Wasserman-Shultz will get a job in administration by drnb · 2016-07-24 11:35 · Score: 4, Insightful

Hillary has already thrown Wasserman-Shultz under the bus, ...

Bull. DNC chairperson Kaine was reward for his long standing loyalty and service to the Clinton's with the VP nomination. DNC chairperson Wasserman-Shultz will be reward for her loyalty and service once Hillary gets into office. Maybe Wasserman-Shultz can be Secretary of State. It seems to be handed out for political reasons anyway, no actual foreign policy experience required it seems.

Bernie supporters get some meaningless words in the party platform. Clinton supporters get positions of power.

Julian Assange, agent of Repub Conspiracy by drnb · 2016-07-24 11:37 · Score: 4, Insightful

but I'm not sure the Dems can win the political game of crazy.

When Julian Assange is part of the great Republican conspiracy to "get" the Clintons I think the Dems are a bit crazy too.

From Russia with love by WaffleMonster · 2016-07-24 11:37 · Score: 3, Funny

What difference at this point does it make who hacked DNC's dammed emails?

Re:Here's more credible evidence of Trump-Russia t by Rei · 2016-07-24 11:38 · Score: 2

A more assertive US? From the guy who wants the US to leave Ukraine to Russia, and overrode the Republican party on the platform issue? Stating that he wants to give Putin a free hand in Syria? Insists that there's no evidence that he kills journalists, political opponents and invades countries? The guy who's exchanged repeated back-and-forth praise with Putin on the campaign trail, with fawning language like "It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond" and "a very bright and strong leader"... so much of a bromance that people in Eastern Europe have started painting murals? Are you talking about the same Donald Trump here?

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Hourglass says she knows a kid in Iowa who grows up to be president.

I have seen some crazy responses here by HBI · 2016-07-24 11:39 · Score: 4, Interesting

Putin allowed these to be released to poke Obama in the eye. No more, no less. The fact that they feed into a long standing story of dishonesty and fraud on the part of the Clintons is incidental. He saw maximum value to let them go right before the DNC, because he knows, like I do, that these e-mails aren't going to decide the election. It wasn't worth holding them until November, as they'd be ineffectual then with all the mud flying in the last couple of weeks.

They are, however, one of hundreds of data points that will decide this election.

He doesn't "support Trump" at all. He'd prefer a HRC in charge - less risk, but he doesn't believe he could turn a US election anyway with any of his tools available. Those who believe otherwise are conspiracy theorists.

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HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.

Re:I have seen some crazy responses here by JosephDoeden · 2016-07-24 12:45 · Score: 1

Data points don't decide and election, a simple vote does. You sound like an idiot. This isn't a video game, you are likely far out of your depth. You obviously don't know Putin's motivations. You're an idiot if you thin Putin controls 'russian' hackers in general. You're an idiot if you think Putin would not benefit from Trump devaluing the US and making it look like a joke. Multiple countries have already asserted that voting Trump is the US giving a clear signal that it no longer wants to play the role of economic leader of the world, because the world is simply not going to let a country who votes for Trump be the economic hub of the world. These days there is no compelling reason to stick with the American market like there was 30 years ago. The US market is just one of many, and one of the least rapidly growing. It's not a minor market, but it and the US economic influence shrink a little each year. Russia has major corruption problems and deep corporate reach into the government. Between the two candidates Trump is easily more of the corrupt businessmen type. Trump also has major business ties in Russia and we have plenty of records of this investment partners, not as many as we'd like, but you can easily dig up a hell of a lot more dirt on Trump in a 10 year period than everything on Hillary over her entire lifetime. Hillary is nothing more than career politician, she has never made big money in her entire life, she has made successful politician money, but nothing out of line and certainly far less than many MANY Republicans holding office with no complains from conservatives. There are no real criminal charges against Hillary, Trump has VASTLY more fraud charges and unethical practice charges than Hillary. The man has been bankrupt 4 times for billions in losses and has steadily ripped people off all his life, leaving behind a trail of litigation where ever he goes. These are not problems that normally successful billionaires usually have to the degree Trump has. Going bankrupt on big investments multiple times is usually a sign you suck at business. Trump has ties to Russia, certainly more than Hillary. Is he aligned with Russia somehow? Probably not, but either way Trump is a fool and so is anyone who even entertains voting for him or has ALLOWED themselves to be convinced that Hillary is even a fraction as corrupt as Trump. Hillary has no long record of major failures. Hillary has a few minor failures which have been blown vastlky out of proportion by the GOP attacks that have hounded her and her husband since the 90s. If Bill or Hillary had said or done half the things Trump has done, conservative would be crying how these are all disqualificying factoers. When they can't produce a better candidate than Trump.. they childishly try to turn the blame and attention to Hillary to hide the the disgusting mass failure that is the republicans part. Where was the conservative outrage when Cheney and Bush wiped their ass on the Constitution and tortured people to death in our name? Conservative spent more money investigating Hillary 50+ times just to find a handful of emails sent to the wrong place AND that her private server was actually far more secure than the government servers you are all whining that she didn use. Did any of you non reading slackers hear me? Hillary's private 'secret' server using her SUPER SECRET domain hillaryemail.com with the Super spy code HRC22... obviously some kind of liberal code.... How stupiud can you people really be? Are you this easily fooled? Do you just believe any dramatic sounding bullshit put in front of you? Can you not be bothered to look something up for a second? Even Sander's supporters, supports the same Democratic platforms we've always wanted and acting like they thought of it (greedy little bastards really). Like Sander's had one original thought in that platform or has actually been a key member in anyway. No he hasn't. Nobody knew the guy until a few months ago. If Sander was a driving force behind the Democrats ... then why do you f
Re:I have seen some crazy responses here by quantaman · 2016-07-24 12:58 · Score: 4, Informative

Putin allowed these to be released to poke Obama in the eye. No more, no less. The fact that they feed into a long standing story of dishonesty and fraud on the part of the Clintons is incidental. He saw maximum value to let them go right before the DNC, because he knows, like I do, that these e-mails aren't going to decide the election.
It keeps "emails" in the news and anytime emails are "leaked" people instantly assume that it exposes a bunch of lies and scandals. The stuff about Sanders also pokes the "Bernie or Bust" movement, Trump's big risk is they all decide that they need to vote Democrat. If he can antagonize them enough they might simply decide to sit out the election.

It wasn't worth holding them until November, as they'd be ineffectual then with all the mud flying in the last couple of weeks.
They are, however, one of hundreds of data points that will decide this election.
He doesn't "support Trump" at all. He'd prefer a HRC in charge - less risk, but he doesn't believe he could turn a US election anyway with any of his tools available. Those who believe otherwise are conspiracy theorists.
If Putin was low risk he wouldn't have invaded Ukraine or stated screwed with NATO member Latvia.
Putin's dream is to break up NATO and eat up a bunch of former USSR members, his fear is that he loses power in some kind of Democratic revolution. Trump is already suggesting he may not defend NATO members, Putin will be very tempted to take advantage of this.
Trump has also openly admired the authoritarian tendencies of Putin and other dictators. If Trump gets in it's very unlikely that Putin's next crackdown will be hit with a bunch of international condemnation led by the US. Trump might even kill the sanctions for attacking Ukraine as part of some deal.

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I stole this Sig
Re:I have seen some crazy responses here by HBI · 2016-07-24 13:21 · Score: 1

I think you strongly misread Trump's motivations and likely response to an act of Russian aggression. I don't think Putin misunderstands, though. He can see clearly through the NATO talk.
Remember that Trump knows how to negotiate, and most positions that he takes are intended to be bargained away while he achieves his real intention. We haven't seen an actual negotiator in office for a very long time, so we may expect our Presidents to be straight man dupes for foreign leaders. That doesn't have to be the case, though.
Trump wants to save the US effort, or get funds for defending Europe. He has no intention of dropping out of NATO or anything like that. I mean, I doubt I am spoiling things for him by saying this. I suspect Europe's leaders will find the risk too high to avoid doing business with him.

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HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Re:I have seen some crazy responses here by HBI · 2016-07-24 13:24 · Score: 1

*I* sound like an idiot? Perhaps. You sound like you're off your meds. "The world is not going to let..." oh please, conspiracy theories are great, aren't they?
Don't be retarded, people will continue to do what is in their economic interest. Trump will change what that means. The result cannot be determined at this time, because if you think you have a crystal ball, you really are nuts.

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HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Re:I have seen some crazy responses here by quantaman · 2016-07-24 15:01 · Score: 3

Remember that Trump knows how to negotiate, and most positions that he takes are intended to be bargained away while he achieves his real intention.
Why do you think he's a great negotiator? Because someone wrote a book called "Art of the Deal" and put his name on it? You realize the US government has plenty of skilled negotiators, I don't see why we should assume that Trump has superpowers.
I'm sure he knows what he's doing when it comes to business deals, but when it comes to international negotiations he seems to be frighteningly out of his depth. Hiding your true intentions in international negotiations doesn't give you great deals, it gives you wars. And bullying people around is fine when you're a business person, but as a country other nations start coordinating against you.

Trump wants to save the US effort, or get funds for defending Europe. He has no intention of dropping out of NATO or anything like that. I mean, I doubt I am spoiling things for him by saying this. I suspect Europe's leaders will find the risk too high to avoid doing business with him.
So what happens when Putin decides to take Latvia (who certainly can't afford Trump's rates)? He's a lot more likely to try with a Trump who might let him get away with it.
What about when South Korea decides to get its own nukes rather than pay Trump's protection fee. Or when he tries to renegotiate the nuclear deal, loses sanction support from the other nations, and Iran decides to get build nukes and ally itself with Russia for protection?

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I stole this Sig
Re:I have seen some crazy responses here by zapadnik · 2016-07-24 18:12 · Score: 1

Wars? You mean like Hillary's illegal war in Libya? the one where she smuggled arms through Benghazi to the jihadis in Syria until her hand-picked Ambassador Stevens was slaughtered by the jihadi group her State Department used as policy? I'd be surprised if Trump could aid the jihadis and create as many conflicts as Secretary Clinton did.
Re:I have seen some crazy responses here by HBI · 2016-07-25 02:43 · Score: 1

Trump is a good negotiator because he spent most of his life fighting with unions and city government(s) to get what he wanted and make money. There is no way to have any success in that business - particularly in New York - without steely resolve to get what you want through whatever means are available.
I can excuse you, if you have never tried to do anything with unions and government, for perhaps believing this is easy.

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HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Re:I have seen some crazy responses here by bongey · 2016-07-25 06:43 · Score: 1

Jake Tapper is that you? https://goo.gl/ar1hEo
Re:I have seen some crazy responses here by budgenator · 2016-07-25 08:24 · Score: 1

It's cute you think Trump's negotiating skills would endanger world peace after Obama's alows Iran to become a nuclear power.

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Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds

No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by drnb · 2016-07-24 11:50 · Score: 4, Insightful

Then you are a fool and you deserve to be ruled by Putin / Trump.

No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins. The US government is actually designed to handle situations like this. There are three separate but equal branches of government that can stalemate the others. IF Trump is elected the Democrats in Congress will oppose any dumb ideas and given the Republican establishment's hatred and anger they will find many Republicans to join in opposition. The Democrats call today's Congress obstructionist, it will be nothing compared to a Congress after a Trump victory.

Only fools believe Trump will get anything he wants. You are just swallowing the political pablum.

Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by drnb · 2016-07-24 12:34 · Score: 1

Its not partisan when the establishment of both major parties hate a particular person. We call that bipartisan, cooperative.

And partisanship that obstructs politicians from doing things is hardly a problem given the politicians of recent decades that are more about good intentions and meaning well rather than actual good outcomes ... a government that governs least and all that.
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by gumbi+west · 2016-07-24 13:43 · Score: 2

To your founding fathers thought of this argument I would add that they weren't sure that they had gotten it right and I'm not sure that they did either. I think they did a pretty good job, but I'd rather not find out.
One of the checks is the parties themselves and he has completely overwhelmed one of those (and the more organized one nonetheless). The power of the president is a mix of hard and soft power. So if local police do what he says (or mayors tell them to) then he can control local police. The Republicans have shown that legislators (at least about half of Republicans) are principally concerned about getting elected and so he need only win an election to show that he can flex some might vs them.
The courts are both the hardest and easiest nut to crack. They have been treated as the final word for a long time now. But they weren't always. Also, they tend to take 5-10 years to resolve where to have lunch and even once they've done that a president can always say, "yeah, too bad, I'm not doing it." No president has done that in a long time, but the court relies (almost) entirely on the executive to carry out its orders.
I'm not saying it is likely, but I wouldn't completely rule it out.
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 14:08 · Score: 1

The President of the United States is given wide latitude by the Constitution to conduct American foreign policy. It's true that war must be declared by Congress, but you may have noticed that there's a gray area of exactly what constitutes a "war". For example, right now, we are not officially at war with either Assad or ISIS, although we've been pounding the shit out of them. Also, Congress is only able to vote a declaration of war up or down; the President is the one who decides to go to war, or not.
Trump has made it clear on several occasions that
1) he admires Vladimir Putin
2) he wants a closer working relationship between the US and Russia
3) he thinks NATO is a "bad deal" for the USA, and
4) he might disregard the key part of the NATO covenant pledging assistance to a member that has been attacked by an external foe, i.e. the Baltic States by Russia
So to say that the POTUS is just a figurehead is nonsense. Look what Bush and Cheney did in Iraq in 2003.
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by drnb · 2016-07-24 14:29 · Score: 3, Insightful

One of the checks is the parties themselves and he has completely overwhelmed one of those (and the more organized one nonetheless).
Parties were never part of the plan and have no governmental authority. That said, he has not overwhelmed the party, he convinced enough voters to become the party nominee. Party members elected to Congress are not obligated to vote his way. Normally the candidate is favored by the party establishment and any non-compliant Congressperson would face some sort of internal discipline, lack of committee assignments, etc. However given how Trump is hated by the establishment such internal discipline is not likely. And if he suggests something "stupid" even more so. Trump will not get anything the mainstream firmly opposes.

The power of the president is a mix of hard and soft power. So if local police do what he says (or mayors tell them to) then he can control local police.
There is no such power. Governors are elected and exercise power independently of the President. Mayors too with respect to both the Governor and President. Police, military, etc swear an oath to the Constitution not the elected leaders. They swear only to obey lawful Constitutional orders from their lawful commanding officers and the President is not a lawful commander of the police.

The Republicans have shown that legislators (at least about half of Republicans) are principally concerned about getting elected and so he need only win an election to show that he can flex some might vs them.
No. Winning a national election is nothing at all like winning a local election. Republican members of Congress won't necessarily face any blowback for ignoring Trump, especially if Trump asked for something "stupid". Keep in mind that nearly all incumbents get re-elected. People generally hate Congress but for some reason think their Congressperson is OK.

No president has done that in a long time, but the court relies (almost) entirely on the executive to carry out its orders.
The police and military are quite good about complying with decisions of the Supreme Court. Again, Trump will get ignored if he tries to ignore a ruling in any substantial way. Again, police and military take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, not the Office of the President, and the Supreme Court decides what is Constitutional not the President.

I'm not saying it is likely, but I wouldn't completely rule it out.
I think monumentally stupid things can be ruled out. Only the normal day-to-day stupidity of politicians will prevail, and that will occur regardless of who holds the office. A divided do nothing government, that might work out well.
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by drnb · 2016-07-24 15:04 · Score: 5, Insightful

Congress is only able to vote a declaration of war up or down; the President is the one who decides to go to war, or not.
That is so wrong. Congress controls the money for the war. No funding for the war and there is no war. The President only gets to suggest spending, Congress has to actually write the spending bill.

he wants a closer working relationship between the US and Russia
So does Hillary, remember her big "reset" on our relationship with Russia?

he thinks NATO is a "bad deal" for the USA
And treaties have to be ratified by Congress.

he might disregard the key part of the NATO covenant pledging assistance to a member that has been attacked by an external foe, i.e. the Baltic States by Russia
Sort of like the assurances the Ukraine got regarding its territorial integrity from the US in exchange for giving up its nukes?

So to say that the POTUS is just a figurehead is nonsense. Look what Bush and Cheney did in Iraq in 2003.
Wrong again, recall that Hillary and the rest of Congress gave them the authority and funding for the war.
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by lucm · 2016-07-24 18:00 · Score: 2

Trump has made it clear on several occasions that
1) he admires Vladimir Putin
2) he wants a closer working relationship between the US and Russia
3) he thinks NATO is a "bad deal" for the USA, and
4) he might disregard the key part of the NATO covenant pledging assistance to a member that has been attacked by an external foe, i.e. the Baltic States by Russia
So what you are saying, basically, is that Trump's foreign policy make more sense than Clinton's?

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lucm, indeed.
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by Rakarra · 2016-07-24 19:17 · Score: 1

Congress doesn't have to write the spending bill, they just have to pass it. The bill could come from anywhere, and often does.
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by drnb · 2016-07-24 19:34 · Score: 1

Congress doesn't have to write the spending bill, they just have to pass it. The bill could come from anywhere, and often does.
The Constitution says spending bill must originate in the House or Representatives. The President can only make suggestions.
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by sribe · 2016-07-25 01:44 · Score: 1

No, if Trump wins, so will the most radical far-right candidates for Congress--consider the kind of angry ignoramuses voting for Trump, if enough of them turn out to elect him, whom do you think they will vote for in all the congressional races?
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by budgenator · 2016-07-25 02:16 · Score: 1

No it'll be a reciprocity problem, to get things done you have to "horse trade" you lend support, you get support. You do people favors and they reciprocate, if enough people owe you favors , you become a power broker and can get bigger stuff done.
Trump understands this system, you can't do the kind of property and construction deals he does without reciprocity, it may take him a while, but with enough time he'll be a major player in politics, the only questions are how much will be enough time and will he have enough of it?

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Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by drnb · 2016-07-25 02:32 · Score: 1

No, if Trump wins, so will the most radical far-right candidates for Congress--consider the kind of angry ignoramuses voting for Trump, if enough of them turn out to elect him, whom do you think they will vote for in all the congressional races?
The incumbent, as usual. So no, your scenario won't happen.
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by schneidafunk · 2016-07-25 06:00 · Score: 1

This is not reflective of history when you consider executive orders.
" as the Commander in Chief of the armed forces, many presidents have sent troops to battle without an official war declaration (ex. Vietnam, Korea). " ...
"Executive Orders:
In times of emergency, the president can override congress and issue executive orders with almost limitless power. Abraham Lincoln used an executive order in order to fight the Civil War, Woodrow Wilson issued one in order to arm the United States just before it entered World War I, and Franklin Roosevelt approved Japanese internment camps during World War II with an executive order." - https://www.law.cornell.edu/we...
"The United States Congress has not formally declared war since World War II. All of our wars in the Middle East have been authorized using other means, which rather goes to the heart of the nature of those different conflicts. " - http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...

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Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by drnb · 2016-07-25 06:19 · Score: 1

This is not reflective of history when you consider executive orders. " as the Commander in Chief of the armed forces, many presidents have sent troops to battle without an official war declaration (ex. Vietnam, Korea). " ...
And Congress voted to fund each and every one of those. Again, Congress can stop a military action by not funding it. That is exactly the check and balance built into the Constitution.

"Executive Orders: In times of emergency, the president can override congress and issue executive orders with almost limitless power. Abraham Lincoln used an executive order in order to fight the Civil War, Woodrow Wilson issued one in order to arm the United States just before it entered World War I, and Franklin Roosevelt approved Japanese internment camps during World War II with an executive order."
And that is why we have a third branch of government, the Supreme Court, to say no. As it did with some of Obama's recently. Oh, and Congress had to fund each of your examples to keep them going. The President can start an action but only Congress can maintain it by funding it.
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by shutdown+-p+now · 2016-07-25 06:50 · Score: 1

No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins. The US government is actually designed to handle situations like this. There are three separate but equal branches of government that can stalemate the others.

Oh, really?
"John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!"
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by schneidafunk · 2016-07-25 07:05 · Score: 1

You are missing the point. Congress funded those operations AFTER the fact, when the military was already committed.
Here is the restriction I think you are trying to reference (since you can't bother to look up information to back up your opinion):
"The War Powers Resolution requires the President notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action and forbids armed forces from remaining for more than 60 days, with a further 30 day withdrawal period, without a Congressional authorization for use of military force (AUMF) or a declaration of war by the United States. The resolution was passed by two-thirds of Congress, overriding a presidential veto.
It has been alleged that the War Powers Resolution has been violated in the past – for example, by President Bill Clinton in 1999, during the bombing campaign in Kosovo. Congress has disapproved all such incidents, but none has resulted in any successful legal actions being taken against the president for alleged violations". -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution
So the president can fully commit our military for 90 days without authorization from congress, plenty of time to invade / conquer / destroy a nation with our current military resources (approved budget of $680 billion, this does not include the supplemental budgets, which is what you are referring to). Afghanistan - government overthrown within Oct - Dec 200, less than 3 months, mostly done within a month. Iraq - government overthrown within 3 weeks of major combat operations. The thing that takes time is rebuilding and 'keeping the peace'. Those two examples, were also approved by congress, but that doesn't really matter, because he could have done it without them. Vietnam & Korea are better examples, or the lesser known Kosovo, Syria, Nicaragua, and broad cold war, but they are probably unfamiliar to you, because I'm guessing you are young.
The supreme court has little to no effect on military operations.
Read up on history kid, your ideological beliefs (however much I wish they were true) do not mirror reality.

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Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by CaptainLard · 2016-07-25 07:29 · Score: 1

I'd prefer a best case scenario that wasn't "we will just punt for 4 years"
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by drnb · 2016-07-25 08:59 · Score: 1

You are missing the point. Congress funded those operations AFTER the fact, when the military was already committed.
Actually I understand the point very well, the military is not truly committed until Congress authorizes the funding. A large scale military operation like either Gulf War invasion needs special funding, take many months to organize. Without such funding the military can be recalled. Things beyond Grenada and Panama sized operations can not be done without Congress.

Here is the restriction I think you are trying to reference (since you can't bother to look up information to back up your opinion):
Actually I am quite familiar with it. You simply misunderstand what I am saying.

The supreme court has little to no effect on military operations.
*You* mentioned the Japanese internment, that is absolutely a military operation the Court could stop. You erroneously blamed that internment on Roosevelt. The truth is that Roosevelt and the Congresses of 1941-45 and the Supreme Courts of 1941-45 and Truman were all responsible for that. Congress or the Court could have stopped it.

Read up on history kid, your ideological beliefs (however much I wish they were true) do not mirror reality.
Please take your own advice and work on the reading comprehension while you are at it.
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by drnb · 2016-07-25 09:17 · Score: 1

No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins. The US government is actually designed to handle situations like this. There are three separate but equal branches of government that can stalemate the others.
Oh, really? "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!"
Thank you for proving my point. The losing side complied and the ruling established the law of the land.

"Worcester v. Georgia ... It is considered to have built the foundations of the doctrine of tribal sovereignty in the United States ... The court ruled that the individual states had no authority in American Indian affairs ... The ruling in Worcester ordered that Worcester be freed, and Georgia complied after several months." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by shutdown+-p+now · 2016-07-25 09:43 · Score: 1

Technically speaking, Georgia didn't comply, in a sense that it admitted the decision to be valid. The people affected were pardoned, which is basically saying "you're still guilty, but we'll let you go just because". They did not repeal the law in question.
In any case, the president can push as far as they think they can get away with. In case of Trump, based on his track record and temperament, he might decide to push all the way into a genuine constitutional crisis. And what then? What happens if an executive issues an unconstitutional order, SCOTUS declares it such, but top of executive demands that it be carried out people under him anyway? In theory, that's when Congress is supposed to impeach; but will a Republican Congress actually do so? And even if it does, what if the president refuses to vacate? Push far enough, and this is something that could only be resolved by use of force. If both sides use it, we're talking about a coup, and potentially a civil war.
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by AK+Marc · 2016-07-25 10:09 · Score: 1

Congress controls the money for the war. No funding for the war and there is no war.

Nope. Congress can eliminate the budget for the military, but doesn't approve $10M on an attack on one city, and $10B for an invasion of another. Most of the military funding is unallocated. Congress is the only one that can vote for war. Before Vietnam, that meant that no action on foreign soil (act of war) could take place without permission of Congress. Going to war was Congress's power. Controlling the military in that war was the President's.

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Learn to love Alaska
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by drnb · 2016-07-25 10:21 · Score: 1

Congress controls the money for the war. No funding for the war and there is no war.
Nope. Congress can eliminate the budget for the military, but doesn't approve $10M on an attack on one city, and $10B for an invasion of another. Most of the military funding is unallocated. Congress is the only one that can vote for war. Before Vietnam, that meant that no action on foreign soil (act of war) could take place without permission of Congress. Going to war was Congress's power. Controlling the military in that war was the President's.
The President can do something like Grenada or Panama on his own. However he can't do something without Congress like either Gulf War that takes immense amounts of money and months of preparation.
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by drnb · 2016-07-25 10:38 · Score: 1

Trump has no real base of power within the Republican party. Those Republicans who accept appointments to his administration are not going to commit political suicide by joining him in something insane. The fbi, military, etc will not follow illegal unconstitutional orders. Trump will be left to rant and yell all alone. He won't be heading a corporation where he effectively has absolute control, he can not get his way as he is used to. Politics in the US doesn't work that way. The US government is designed to prevent such things. Yes the Republican Congress would probably love to impeach him and get one of their own, Pence, into the office. White House security will escort Trump to the door if need be. A coup, a civil war, by who? Most of his voters don't like him, they just hate Hillary more. Some Bernie voters at the Dem Convention are being interviewed and saying they'd rather have Trump and four years of gridlock. This election is truly about two disliked candidates and people voting for the one they dislike the least. Whoever wins there will be no mandate and likely gridlock.
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by schneidafunk · 2016-07-25 13:55 · Score: 1

"Grenada & Panama sized operations", you must have glossed over my list of other operations in my last comment. I will not repeat, reread yourself.
I still have not seen you back up your opinion with any sort of real world example.
Instead of me proving you wrong with countless other examples, how about you show me one example where congress has stopped a military operation with funding cuts, or the supreme court with judicial rulings. History has proven time and time again that these ideological checks & balances are not working as well as they should. The executive branch is becoming stronger, with both political parties pushing for it in their own unique way.

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Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by drnb · 2016-07-25 14:29 · Score: 1

I still have not seen you back up your opinion with any sort of real world example. Instead of me proving you wrong with countless other examples, how about you show me one example where congress has stopped a military operation with funding cuts, or the supreme court with judicial rulings.
You seem confused on history, the record is one of Presidents going to Congress over large scale military operations not avoiding it. As for the Supreme Court there again we have the record of history saying the Court does have jurisdiction over the military to ensure adherence to the Constitution.

History has proven time and time again that these ideological checks & balances are not working as well as they should.
Actually history shows Presidents, Congresses and Courts agreeing to make the same mistake, as in the Japanese internment case. That is something quite different than checks and balances not existing.
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by schneidafunk · 2016-07-25 16:29 · Score: 1

I noticed you still haven't backed up one thing you believe with an actual reference. Time is more important to me than making you smarter. This will be my last response to you.

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Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by AK+Marc · 2016-07-25 22:43 · Score: 1

Before WWII, can you show a single example of the US landing troops in a foreign country without Congressional approval? Panama? Probably. Grenada? No. That's an invasion of a sovereign nation. That it was allowed doesn't mean it wasn't "illegal".

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Learn to love Alaska
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by drnb · 2016-07-26 11:33 · Score: 1

Perhaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Re:No one will be ruled by Trump even if he wins by AK+Marc · 2016-07-26 14:05 · Score: 1

I had neglected those, but under policy at the time, they weren't "foreign" countries, but US administered countries, according to the Treaty of Paris. Most of the precedent set for Presidential acts of war without a war declared were in response to Vietnam, because it wasn't generally done before Eisenhower invaded and seized control of the Vietnam government (whose party later blamed Kennedy for "starting" the war).

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Learn to love Alaska

Re:Wasserman-Shultz will get a job in administrati by prisoner-of-enigma · 2016-07-24 11:53 · Score: 5, Insightful

Bernie supporters get some meaningless words in the party platform. Clinton supporters get positions of power.

Oh, I'm sorry. Were you unaware the system was rigged long ago? Between the DNC's internal schemes to anoint Hillary and whole idea of "superdelegates," you don't have much in the way of say-so about who gets the DNC nomination. "But trust us," the DNC says. "We know better than you who's fit to rule you."

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In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Re: They'll say anything by Rei · 2016-07-24 12:02 · Score: 5, Informative

I follow the Syrian conflict very closely and there's a new hospital or clinic hit by airstrikes about once a week on average... sometimes more, sometimes less. It's not always clear which airforce (Syrian or Russian) is doing it, but more often than not when the distinction can be determined it's Russian. There was a multiple clinic hit in Idlib about a week ago, while an ambulance was hit in Aleppo 4 days ago.

It's really a meat grinder over there :(

A lot of the time the hits on civilian targets are accidental. Sometimes they're on purpose. Most of what Russia uses, and virtually all of what the Syrian air force uses, are "dumb bombs". For the past month the vast majority of Russia's air power has been directed at north Aleppo (Handaraat / al-Mallah, primarily), so there's been a great amount of white phosphorus and cluster bombs, but in denser-populated areas near Castello Road they use a lot more high explosives. So there's a lot of potential for accidental hits. On the other hand, in many cases it's hard to interpret the attacks as anything but deliberate attacks, particularly on hospitals that are treating wounded rebels - multiple hits on the same target, targets with no conflict in the immediate area, with no obvious targets of value nearby, etc. They do a lot of "double tap" hits on them as well.

Just in case anyone isn't aware... this isn't "ISIS" that they're focusing on. Daesh (ISIS) doesn't exist in Aleppo, let alone Idlib (further), let alone Latakia (even further), let alone the freaking Jordanian border which they've been bombing recently much to the anger of the Pentagon (whose "New Syrian Army" is there trying to take Al-Bukamal from Daesh and cut off Daesh traffic to and from Iraq). When they do bomb Daesh, it''s overwhelmingly in two areas: Palmyra and Deir ez Zour. The latter is a Syrian government pocket in the middle of Daesh territory that they've been struggling to hang onto for a long time, against constant assault. The former is well known. One exception: the government forces, with some Russian air support, tried an assault from Ithyria toward the Daesh city of al-Taqbah, but they were basically baited into a trap and suffered massive losses. They retreated back to Ithriya and haven't retried since then.

Oh, and while we're talking about Syria, two things of mention:

1) The massive "factory of death" southwest of al-Safira exploded last week, with a huge earthquake that rattled houses 50km away, was visible 75km away and audible 100km away. Hopefully that'll reduce the barrel bomb and elephant rocket attacks... at least somewhat...

2) There's a lot of chatter that Nusra is imminently going to break with al-Qaeda. This would be huge if it happens, but I'll trust it when I see it.

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Hourglass says she knows a kid in Iowa who grows up to be president.

yawn. by Black+Parrot · 2016-07-24 12:03 · Score: 2, Insightful

Who'd'a thought the DNC would favor a centrist party insider over a left-leaning outsider? (The Bernie camp has been complaining about this since day one.)

Who'd'a thought the internet is full of hax0rs that break into any and every system they can and proclaim that they've done something earthshaking?

Who'd'a thought Assuange would try to spin it as something to do with the Hillary server scandal?

Who'd'a thought a campaign manager would have made an outrageous claim?

Who'd'a thought the opposing campaign manager would make a vacuous counter-claim?

Who'd'a thought Slashdot would run with such a nothing-burger story when there are actually interesting things going on in the world?

I take my subject back - a yawn overrates the whole thing.

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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade

and Clinton deleted hers to get out of prsion time by Joe_Dragon · 2016-07-24 12:06 · Score: 1

and Clinton deleted hers to get out of prsion time

Um... because there is one? by rsilvergun · 2016-07-24 12:07 · Score: 2, Insightful

Look, whatever else you think good or bad about Hilary the fact is a lot of very, very wealthy people have it in for her. Fox news alone is enough to account for a conspiracy by the strict definition. What's that old quote from Gore Vidal? I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I'm a conspiracy documenter. Or put another way: a conspiracy is just two or more people doing something shady. If you can't find two folks from the anti Hilary side doing something shady then you sure aren't even trying...

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Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/

Re:Um... because there is one? by ArtemaOne · 2016-07-24 14:14 · Score: 1

No, a conspiracy is 5 or more people.

Re:Here's more credible evidence of Trump-Russia t by quantaman · 2016-07-24 12:15 · Score: 1

The Clinton astroturfing is strong with this one.

OMG someone disagrees with you!

How could another human being capable of written language possibly disagree with you?!?

Obviously they must be a paid plant from that group you remember hearing about once!!

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I stole this Sig

Who handles the DNC email? by reboot246 · 2016-07-24 12:37 · Score: 1

Did the DNC let Hillary set up their email server for them? She's the go-to gal when it comes to email security.

There is a name for this type of "defense" by superwiz · 2016-07-24 12:54 · Score: 4, Insightful

It's called shooting the messenger. Even if Russia did hack the DNC servers, what they chose to release still demonstrates inappropriate behavior by the DNC chair. Even if Trump's candidacy benefits Russia, it doesn't change the fact that DNC chair undermining democratic elections (with a small "d") doesn't help The United States.

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Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.

Re:Here's more credible evidence of Trump-Russia t by superwiz · 2016-07-24 13:14 · Score: 1

The Clinton astroturfing is strong with this one.

Very much so. Putin's political power comes from opposing oligarchs (who were self-made billionaires in the post-Soviet collapse). It is the fact that so many people couldn't adjust to the market-based economy which fueled frustration with the few who did. His power is maintained almost exclusively through dictatorship-style extra-judicial confiscation of wealth created by oligarchs and handing it over to his political cronies. These cronies are much better described as apparatchiks than "oligarchs."

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Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.

Re:Niggers Beware!!! by Plus1Entropy · 2016-07-24 13:19 · Score: 3, Informative

This is why there is actually quite a lot of black trump supporters.

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Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.

Re:Here's more credible evidence of Trump-Russia t by superwiz · 2016-07-24 13:21 · Score: 4, Insightful

No one supports Clintons unless they are paid too or threatened. Her utter disregard for the rule of law and use of raw power to intimidate her opponents is so apparent that the only question is why is no one is asking for RICO statue to be applied against her. She doesn't just breaks laws. She is running a criminal organization and uses political intimidation and bribery to push for more power. The only difference between her and the mob is that the mob did their deeds in hiding and Clinton does it in plain view. And lest anyone thinks that Trump will lose, he has a history of entering business arenas dominated by the mob and winning despite playing clean and not becoming a mobster himself. He has beaten these types of people before. If we are lucky, he'll do it again.

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Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.

Working with? [Re:well well well] by Tablizer · 2016-07-24 13:27 · Score: 2

Who said "working with"? I found no claim of the GOP working with Russia to pull off the hack. So far the DNC claim is that Russia hacked or backed the hacks because Russia wants Trump to win.

Trump has talked about dismantling or shrinking NATO, which Russia would be happy with. GOP doesn't have to be involved for Russia to make such a conclusion.

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Table-ized A.I.

Re:Working with? [Re:well well well] by Fragnet · 2016-07-24 14:08 · Score: 1

The DNC claim is the DNC claim. Parent said explicitly the Republicans were "working with" Russian security services. You are simply parroting the DNC narrative that Trump is good for Russia and inviting naïve or stupid readers to join the dots. Nothing new there. We had the same in Project Fear over Brexit. Apparently voting for Brexit was "good for Russia" too. Well fuck you and fuck Russia.
Re: Working with? [Re:well well well] by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 20:10 · Score: 1

Trump hasn't talked about dismantling out shrinking NATo. He's saying "fair is fair" and "pay your share". How is asking country's who want your protection to pay their share a "bad thing" (TM).
Re:Working with? [Re:well well well] by kria · 2016-07-25 01:47 · Score: 1

And Trump also has spoken favorably of Brexit, which might lead to other countries leaving the EU, a weaker EU is also to Russia's benefit. (Not to get all conspiracy theory.)
Re:Working with? [Re:well well well] by Aighearach · 2016-07-25 06:19 · Score: 1

No worries, "actors might act to support their most obvious interests" isn't exactly a "conspiracy theory." It seems pretty obvious that Trump would be really great for Russia, just based on his known policy ideas and their intended effects.
Re:Working with? [Re:well well well] by Tablizer · 2016-07-25 06:51 · Score: 1

Sorry, I could not find it. Could you please provide an EXACT quote so I have unambiguous context in order to read it? Thank You.

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Table-ized A.I.
Re:Working with? [Re:well well well] by Fragnet · 2016-07-25 07:03 · Score: 1

If the Republican candidate's campaign is working with the Russian intelligence agencies to sabotage the opposition, it sure as fuck matters more who did it.
Re:Working with? [Re:well well well] by Tablizer · 2016-07-25 07:12 · Score: 1

"If"? That's not an accusation, but a conditional. And it's probably not from the DNC staff; they don't cuss in press releases.

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Table-ized A.I.
Re:Working with? [Re:well well well] by On+Lawn · 2016-07-25 07:17 · Score: 1

You just tiptoed up to a point that I think is most interesting.
Why would we assume the Russians would do this to support Trump, instead of the candidate who is a self proclaimed socialist, on the eve of his last logistical chance of getting the nomination, who was the one who was directly hurt by the exposed actions?
Now I might have my reasons but to take this question one step further, why would Hillary or the DNC assume this was to help Trump and not Bernie?
Re:Working with? [Re:well well well] by Fragnet · 2016-07-25 07:25 · Score: 1

Jesus. What is wrong with you? My comment concerned Dahamma's -1 flaimbait comment higher up in the thread. Do pay attention.
Re:Working with? [Re:well well well] by Tablizer · 2016-07-25 07:30 · Score: 1

I have literalitus. I lack the gland that allows one to "read between the lines".

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Table-ized A.I.
Re:Working with? [Re:well well well] by Fragnet · 2016-07-25 08:26 · Score: 1

It's one of the mysteries of Slashdot that comments get hidden once they reach Level 20. You can unhide them with the usability-obfuscated sliders at the top, if you have Asperger's. Otherwise you'll just have to take my word for it.
Re: Working with? [Re:well well well] by Dahamma · 2016-07-25 10:21 · Score: 1

Threatening to ignore a member state when they invoke Article 5 is basically the same thing as dismantling NATO. The whole point of the treaty is "attack one of us, you attack all of us".

Re:Here's more credible evidence of Trump-Russia t by Applehu+Akbar · 2016-07-24 13:34 · Score: 1

"Sub-garch" is the coolest word that ought to exist.

Re:Here's more credible evidence of Trump-Russia t by Applehu+Akbar · 2016-07-24 13:36 · Score: 1

I am curious: where is that mural?

Re:Here's more credible evidence of Trump-Russia t by Rei · 2016-07-24 13:38 · Score: 2

Lithuania.

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Hourglass says she knows a kid in Iowa who grows up to be president.

Contaminated content by seven+of+five · 2016-07-24 13:42 · Score: 2, Interesting

If the source of the emails is a Russian hacker, who's to say that any of the content is genuine? What if some of it were doctored? Source can't be trusted.

Re:Contaminated content by NoImNotNineVolt · 2016-07-25 02:40 · Score: 1

While your point is valid, the DNC chair has already chosen to resign rather than make the argument you just raised. She seems to have found the source trustworthy herself.

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Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Re:Contaminated content by shutdown+-p+now · 2016-07-25 07:21 · Score: 1

The fact that DNC has not stated so, even though they've had plenty of opportunities by now?
The fact that several people have already apologized for their emails?

Well USA? by Trogre · 2016-07-24 14:15 · Score: 1

How's that two-party system working out for you?

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"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife

Re:Don't. Just don't. by mmdurrant · 2016-07-24 14:17 · Score: 1

Looking at the 2012 electoral map, flipping Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania results in a win for the GOP. All 4 of these states took a swing right in 2012 - moving further right isn't crazy. Well, ignoring the Trump factor - I think that throws enough unpredictability into the mix that it renders prognostication fruitless until the debates. And as far as I know, Trump has never been trained in formal debate. That might make the debates worth watching.

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I see my shadow changing, stretching up and over me...

So let me get this straight.... by plazman30 · 2016-07-24 14:38 · Score: 1

So Hillary Clinton just admitted that the Russian government had unfettered access to the DNC email server. So, it's not just Hillary that can't keep her email secure, but leader of the Democratic Party as well.

How about we all just agree to get along and elect no one as president.

Why didn't... by KenHansen · 2016-07-24 14:58 · Score: 1

Why didn't the DNC hire the same consultant Hillary hired to secure her private email server - it was apparently impervious to hackers?

What the hell, Assange? by DNS-and-BIND · 2016-07-24 15:03 · Score: 1

I just don't get why Assange and his Wikileaks participated in this. It does not help his side in any way, and in fact the emails are very damaging. They reveal that the Democrats planned violent anti-Trump protests. Signs were pre-printed and shipped to paid shills who acted as protesters. They told the media to stop reporting stories. They rigged the primaries to screw over Sanders. Assange revealing this kind of thing just plays into the hands of the enemies. Has he gone crazy in that embassy? I just can't figure out why he would deliberately harm his own side like this. He's really the one to blame here, not Russia.

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Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!

Re:Best of luck to them by MightyYar · 2016-07-24 15:09 · Score: 1

I'm not really commenting on Hillary's effectiveness or lack thereof - but if she's going to attack Trump for being unsuitable to run the nation's foreign policy, she probably should be careful about pointing out countries who, despite plenty of interaction with Hillary, would prefer to work with Trump.

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W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.

Re:Here's more credible evidence of Trump-Russia t by quantaman · 2016-07-24 15:11 · Score: 1, Informative

No one supports Clintons unless they are paid too or threatened.

No one writes something like this unless they're hyperbolic or a moron.

Whatever you think of Clinton it's should be obvious that many people don't share your opinion.

Her utter disregard for the rule of law and use of raw power to intimidate her opponents is so apparent that the only question is why is no one is asking for RICO statue to be applied against her. She doesn't just breaks laws. She is running a criminal organization and uses political intimidation and bribery to push for more power. The only difference between her and the mob is that the mob did their deeds in hiding and Clinton does it in plain view.

It's apparent as the Kenyan hut where Obama was born.

And lest anyone thinks that Trump will lose, he has a history of entering business arenas dominated by the mob and winning despite playing clean and not becoming a mobster himself. He has beaten these types of people before. If we are lucky, he'll do it again.

Seriously, WTF. Do you seriously look at Trump, the thousands of lawsuits, the countless obvious scams, the brazen lying, and think "ooh! he looks like a trustworthy person with integrity!".

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I stole this Sig

Re: They'll say anything by phantomfive · 2016-07-24 15:34 · Score: 1

1) The massive "factory of death" southwest of al-Safira exploded last week, with a huge earthquake that rattled houses 50km away, was visible 75km away and audible 100km away. Hopefully that'll reduce the barrel bomb and elephant rocket attacks... at least somewhat...

That's cool, I missed that.

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"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."

Huh? by s.petry · 2016-07-24 15:37 · Score: 1

The small meaningless lies should really worry you more than the whoppers, especially when there is a steady stream for decades. An occasional whopper shows a person who makes mistakes and does not like accountability, a somewhat normal behavior. The constant lying indicates mental illness.

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-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

Re:Huh? by quantaman · 2016-07-24 15:53 · Score: 1

The small meaningless lies should really worry you more than the whoppers, especially when there is a steady stream for decades. An occasional whopper shows a person who makes mistakes and does not like accountability, a somewhat normal behavior. The constant lying indicates mental illness.
Ok, you have a couple instances where Clinton may have lied.
Your choice is her or Trump, Trump who can barely open his mouth without lying. And that's seriously not an exaggeration, the dude constantly lies about absolutely everything, it's absolutely ridiculous.
I'm sorry if I can't convince you that Clinton is more or less a typical political when it comes to truth and integrity. But if you're looking at truth and integrity the choice of Clinton vs Trump should be the easiest thing possible.

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I stole this Sig

and your point is? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 15:39 · Score: 1

There are many Democrats who "have it in for" Republican politicians. That's normal. There is nothing unusual or illegitimate about the idea that a politician has political opponents.

All the super-rich of Silicon Valley have signed a declaration against Trump. Is This a "vast conspiracy"?

Most of the nation's super-rich fund anti-republican activities. This includes Zuckerberg, Soros, Gates, Buffet, and more. Soros funds hundreds of anti-Republican outlets including many of the most-popular left-wing web sites. Zuckerberg actually setup a fake conservative group to try to trick grass-roots Republicans into supporting Democrats. Is this a "vast conspiracy"?

Most of the nation's entertainers are against most Republicans. Is this a "vast conspiracy"?

Every study done in the past 50 years has shown that (depending on the study) 80% to 95% of America's journalists are Democrats who never vote for Republicans. Is this a "vast conspiracy"?

Back in the 1970s Democrats denounced Nixon as a bad guy citing as evidence that he had compiled an "enemies list". They evenn tried to impeach him for talking about using the IRS againsts his "enemies" - not for doing it, which he never did, but only for talking about it.

My how things change......

Broke the law by Smiddi · 2016-07-24 16:02 · Score: 1

She still broke the law and risked national security. This is another typical "shoot the messenger" type mindset we expect from governments to avoid the actual issue.

Really, Clinton Campaign? by Greyfox · 2016-07-24 16:06 · Score: 1

Because it kind of looks to me like the despicable things you're doing is helping Trump. Seems like no matter what happens, America will get the president it deserves, so maybe I'll just write "None of the above" in on my ballot. Fucking assclowns.

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I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

Re:Here's more credible evidence of Trump-Russia t by mvdwege · 2016-07-24 16:31 · Score: 2

No one supports Clintons unless they are paid too or threatened.

Then she must have some deep pockets supporting her, as every public job she has done she has left with increased public support.

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"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?

Re:Dammit Trump! Enough with the Conspiracy Theori by vandelais · 2016-07-24 17:06 · Score: 3, Funny

You know when fluoridation first began?
Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, CajunArson. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.
first became aware of it during the physical act of love. Yes, a profound sense of fatigue... a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily, I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence.

And there's no fighting in here.

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Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.

RUSSIA MADE US LOOK BAD! by Jeremiah+Cornelius · 2016-07-24 17:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

By letting you KNOW what we REALLY think and how AWFUL we ACTUALLY behave!

BLAME RUSSIA!

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"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."

Re: RUSSIA MADE US LOOK BAD! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-24 20:02 · Score: 1

The real news here is that there is even more damning evidence of Clinton's crimes, but we are to ignore it because: Russia. I say SPASIBA ROSSIYA!! Hillary for Prison 2016.
Re:RUSSIA MADE US LOOK BAD! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-07-25 01:55 · Score: 1

Pretty much.
If Russia is "supporting" Trump by way of revealing massive corruption within the Democrat party, perhaps they're more aligned with the interests of US citizens than said Democrats.
Re:RUSSIA MADE US LOOK BAD! by Aighearach · 2016-07-25 05:15 · Score: 1

And if there wasn't any sign of "massive corruption," but what happened was that somebody wrote an internal email that offended somebody after it was leaked? Then what? Same outrage as "massive corruption," snowflake?

If it was the Russian's fault by Dasher42 · 2016-07-24 17:24 · Score: 4, Insightful

If it was the Russians' fault, then why did your DNC Chair have to step down?!

Re:Wasserman-Shultz will get a job in administrati by lucm · 2016-07-24 18:07 · Score: 1

Can you name one disgraced supporter of the Clintons that has been rewarded (other than by being found dead in his office?).

That's not how the Democrats do politics. Look at how Obama treated Oprah *after* his election.

Meanwhile Wolfowitz got caught with his hand in the cookie jar and what happened? His old friends found him another gravy train to ride.

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lucm, indeed.

Apropos Akbar by Xenographic · 2016-07-24 18:35 · Score: 1

A trap? You mean like ignoring their own lawyer's advice over what is and is not legal?

Interestingly enough, I can't help but notice that this is from the WaPo, which is the same one that held this fundraiser the lawyers told them not to hold...

Source: https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emai...

Explanation: https://theconservativetreehou...

So I understand... by Alypius · 2016-07-24 18:39 · Score: 3, Funny

...Hillary's staff has insisted for months that Russia never hacked her accounts. Yet for some reason the same staff is blaming the Russians for leaking these details. Must be more of that Smart Diplomacy we've been hearing about, what with that Russian Reset and all.

Re:Wasserman-Shultz will get a job in administrati by tsotha · 2016-07-24 18:51 · Score: 4, Insightful

The superdelegate system was created specifically to keep people like Sanders out, and it works.

New technology by tsotha · 2016-07-24 18:53 · Score: 1

What is it with Grandma and email?

Re:Wasserman-Shultz will get a job in administrati by Rakarra · 2016-07-24 19:21 · Score: 2

Oh, I'm sorry. Were you unaware the system was rigged long ago? Between the DNC's internal schemes to anoint Hillary and whole idea of "superdelegates," you don't have much in the way of say-so about who gets the DNC nomination.

Were you supposed to? The DNC is a private organization, who they send to the general election in November is their business and no one else's. They give lip service to democratic process, but they don't need to.

Re:Wasserman-Shultz will get a job in administrati by drnb · 2016-07-24 20:29 · Score: 4, Insightful

Can you name one disgraced supporter of the Clintons that has been rewarded

"Friday, April 1, 2005; Page A01 Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, a former White House national security adviser, plans to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, and will acknowledge intentionally removing and destroying copies of a classified document about the Clinton administration's record on terrorism ... Berger spoke falsely last summer in public claims that in 2003 he twice inadvertently walked off with copies of a classified document during visits to the National Archives, then later lost them."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

"Berger served as a foreign policy adviser to Senator Hillary Clinton in her 2008 presidential campaign."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

and what ? by Tom · 2016-07-24 21:06 · Score: 1

Even if it's the russians, or the chinese, or the devil himself - they don't deny that the mails are real, and that is what matters. Who leaked them is an interesting academic question, and it might have influenced the timing, but that's about it.

They are crooked and corrupt and criminals, and no amount of fingerpointing changes that - but given the state of the media and the attention span of the public, it might work anyway.

Someone posted something the other day that was interesting. In essence, the "lesser of two evils" argument doesn't work for Hillary or the Democrats this time.

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Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org

Re:and what ? by SuricouRaven · 2016-07-24 22:44 · Score: 1

There's nothing in the emails that conclusively shows crime, at least not that's been found yet. A lot of internal backstabbing, some very unguarded insults, but nothing criminal.
Re:and what ? by Tom · 2016-07-27 05:01 · Score: 1

That particular remark was aimed more at the other e-mail scandal, where the whole world wonders which strings had to be pulled to make high treason an offense that doesn't justify being pursued.

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Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org

A question about US elections by fraxinus-tree · 2016-07-24 21:08 · Score: 1

European here. Clinton is profoundly corrupt and no one really tries to hide the fact, Trump is an idiot. Both your parties nominated candidates as if they don't really want the office and hope the other party wins the election. Is it really the case or I am missing something?

Re:A question about US elections by tazan · 2016-07-25 03:00 · Score: 1

It looks that way from here also.

Re: They'll say anything by Rei · 2016-07-24 22:28 · Score: 1

Yeah, seems everyone took out their camera that night to film either the rising fireball or the celebrations about it ;) The rebels have tried several times to assault it in the past but always been beaten back. Reports on why it exploded are conflicting; one early report suggested that a helicopter full of explosives crashed on a warehouse in the complex. Firefighters from Assad-controlled areas all over Aleppo were called in because the al-Safirah fire department was overwhelmed, but they couldn't get close due to the intensity of the flames and risk of further explosions. A number of people living in the vicinity of the factories were admitted to the hospital on poisoning symptoms from the fumes.

It's now an open question as to how much they're going to be able to salvage and get back in operation; no question that's going to be top priority for them at this point.

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Hourglass says she knows a kid in Iowa who grows up to be president.

Don't blame the alleged Russians... by mschaffer · 2016-07-24 22:43 · Score: 1

Don't blame the alleged Russians for doing anything other than bringing this to light. Too bad they aren't denying the content. Maybe if the DNC and Hillary weren't such a conniving group of back-room oligarchs there would be nothing for the Russians to find. I guess that Bernie was right and it's not Donald's fault for potentially benefiting from it.

Re:Niggers Beware!!! by Joce640k · 2016-07-24 22:51 · Score: 1

"They'll say anything to be able to win this."

LOL!

Oh, that's good... coming from a Trump.

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No sig today...

Systematic ineptitude within the DNC by voss · 2016-07-24 23:31 · Score: 1

Never blame on malice that can be better explained by stupidity and incomptetence DWS was to leave after this election cycle anyway. Obamas people wanted her out after 2014, Clintons people wanted her out too but wanted to give her a soft landing until these emails came out. It wasnt a matter of whether she was capable of running the DNC impatially, she was not capable of running the DNC at all. All the emails show is how badly run the DNC was under her tenure she was incomptetent, unprofessional and petty.

She's the one taking their money. by sabbede · 2016-07-25 00:16 · Score: 1

It was in the Panama papers (probably elsewhere too) - Oligarch money funneled to the Clinton Foundation.

But then the wrong lizard might win! by EzInKy · 2016-07-25 00:22 · Score: 1

Look, we all hate lizards. But just think how bad things will be if "their" lizard is in control!

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Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.

Re:Wasserman-Shultz will get a job in administrati by lucm · 2016-07-25 00:34 · Score: 1

I don't think you understand what it means to be "rewarded". They didn't find him a cushy job, he had to go in business for himself after being kicked out from the White House for doing their dirty work.

You can bet that if she hired him again five years later it wasn't a reward. Just like it wasn't a reward when Obama got back in touch with Oprah to have her support for his reelection after having ignored her for his entire first term (and surprisingly she took a pass).

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lucm, indeed.

The Donald and his budget by CmdrTamale · 2016-07-25 01:25 · Score: 1

Well if he led a super indulgent lifestyle from age 20-something to age 70 and still has $100M left he might know what he is doing.

He is either planning to live another 100 years, or he really needs to up his game and spend faster.
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If the RNC had been two weeks later, Trump could have picked Bernie for his Veep.

Re:spekaing English by cayenne8 · 2016-07-25 01:56 · Score: 2

Except who doesn't speak some level of English

Well, more and more it seems English is being spoken less and less in the USA.

Hence we seeing the Dem. vice president speaking Spanish at rallies......

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Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........

None of the above by StikyPad · 2016-07-25 02:05 · Score: 1

This has to be one of the worst Presidential elections in recent history. I thought '04 was particularly bad when the Democrats couldn't front a candidate to beat Bush, but at least Bush had some popular support. In this election, neither candidate has popular support, with both running around 70% unfavorable. In other words, no matter who wins, the majority of the country does NOT want them as President. We need to carefully consider how our system got us into this position, and how we can avoid it in the future.

Personally, I'm in favor of major overhaul and a transition to direct democracy, but I think there are a plethora of alternatives that are more resistant to corrupt manipulation than our current system. Even a parliamentary system would at least give other viewpoints a voice in governance rather than the binary system we have now.

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https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

Yet more anti Russian cyber bullshit .. by khz6955 · 2016-07-25 02:17 · Score: 1

We're just making this shit up as we go along, nothing to see here, moving on. The real story being that the DNC is attempting to distract from the contents of the emails by accusing the Russians.

Only two questions matter... by KenHansen · 2016-07-25 02:36 · Score: 1

1) Are the emails genuine? 2) If they are genuine, what are you willing to do about them? It makes no difference who got the emails or why they released them. Remember, this is only the first dump - Wikileaks claims there are more to come... And with this dump Wikileaks was able to force DWS out as head of the DNC, something the President was reluctant to do despite his well-documented, deep, deep dislike for her.

Re:spekaing English by StikyPad · 2016-07-25 02:41 · Score: 1

Damn, son, I hope you dropped the mic, cause you just TRUMPED that thread. Build the wall 2016, Mexico something something, look at my wife!

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https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

Tu quoque by s.petry · 2016-07-25 02:49 · Score: 1

Look, I don't have any need to show you research which is easy to find. Hillary claiming to carry hot sauce in her purse while talking on a black radio show, and thousands of other "little" lies are all over. The excuse I'm guessing you will use is "she is just pandering" which does not change the fact that she lies about both big and small things all the time.

Stop trying to deny Clinton's lies and excuse her behavior by fallacious means. Clinton is a liar, and demonstrates a pathological level of lying. She should be medicated in a home, not running for President.

If you want to complain about Trump change the subject. Trump does not always say the smartest things, but he is a terrible liar and does not do so very often because it's so obvious. (See his claim of being an Evangelist). He has his own problems sure, but being a pathological liar is not one of them.

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-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

Re:Wasserman-Shultz will get a job in administrati by drnb · 2016-07-25 03:15 · Score: 1

They didn't find him a cushy job, he had to go in business for himself after being kicked out from the White House for doing their dirty work.

The Clinton were already out of the White House when he cofounded his company. This company had various other former government workers. Likely their Clinton contacts help(ed) their client list and contract portfolio. It was typical cashing in on government experience and contacts. He stole and destroyed the Millenial attack reports during this timeframe and was reward with work from Hillary as soon as her campaign began.

Re:Best of luck to them by budgenator · 2016-07-25 03:30 · Score: 1

He's probably hoping Hilldebeast wins the Presidency so he can continue to beat her up. If she wins, and she continue the endless string of fuck-ups she engaged in since before she was First Lady of Arkansas, he can just sit back and very smugly say "I not only told you so, but I did everything I could to to stop it."

She could easily set our foreign policy back an other 50 years, which wouldn't hurt Russia's interests at all. You have to admire the Russians, when they set their minds to achieving a goal, they laser-lock on it; often the work on achieving the goal is multi-generational. Every thing they do is geared toward achieving that goal. Anybody that thinks Russia is a different country just because it's not Communist any more is a fool.

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Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds

Re:Wasserman-Shultz will get a job in administrati by T.E.D. · 2016-07-25 03:31 · Score: 1

Oh, I'm sorry. Were you unaware the system was rigged long ago? Between the DNC's internal schemes to anoint Hillary and whole idea of "superdelegates," you don't have much in the way of say-so about who gets the DNC nomination.

Sanders didn't lose because of any "internal schemes". He lost because less actual Democratic voters preferred him. That's all on him.

Let's look at the Caucuses and Superdelegates. Caucuses are every bit as "undemocratic" as the Superdelegates, but you don't hear complaints about those, because Sanders used that fact to win most of those. Then in the last month of the campaign, there was an active campaign from the Sanders people to get SD's to switch their votes to him, and ignore how their states voted. For that one glorious month, the Superdelegates were just great according to Sanders.

Sander's people's real problem isn't that the "system was rigged". Never has been. Their problem is that the system wasn't rigged enough in their favor.

Re:Wasserman-Shultz will get a job in administrati by drnb · 2016-07-25 03:32 · Score: 1

I don't think you understand what it means to be "rewarded".

He was working as a foreign policy adviser on her 2008 campaign. What do you imagine would have happened had she won?

Re:Here's more credible evidence of Trump-Russia t by budgenator · 2016-07-25 03:41 · Score: 1

Now I'm sorry I posted in this thread, that was funny!

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Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds

Nobody cares about Russia by mi · 2016-07-25 04:51 · Score: 1

You're assuming that it's equally easy to get damaging materials from both countries. That's an incorrect assumption.

It may not be equally easy with Russia, but it is quite easy nonetheless. It is just very few people care. Ukrainians, for example, have been collecting undeniable proofs of Russia's official involvement in the alleged "civil" war in Ukraine's East. They don't have governmental backing, but they have patience enough to sift through social media looking for selfies, that Russian conscripts post online (with geotagging enabled). And yet, you can still encounter people even on Slashdot, who would deny Russian involvement...

Similarly, there is solid evidence — put together by volunteers and governmental investigators, that a Russian SAM shot down the Malaysian Boeing in 2014... And yet, a Google search for it today still brings up a theory, that it was a Ukrainian jet (top altitude 5000m), that shot down the airliner (flying at 10000m)...

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In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.

Re:Here's more credible evidence of Trump-Russia t by superwiz · 2016-07-25 04:51 · Score: 1

Her only support comes from uninformed or zombified. And the thinking people are only supporting her because they see money in it or they are scared of her. Her power grows just like the power of any two-bit dictator. She uses power to gain more power. This is why we have term limits. Although she obviously found a way around them.

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Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.

Russia Leaked Emails to Help TRUMP???? by kenwd0elq · 2016-07-25 04:53 · Score: 1

Balderdash. With all the vulnerabilities of Hillary's 'server", and the 99+% probability that it has been routinely penetrated, _ANYBODY_ could have leaked her emails to Wikileaks.

On the other hand, _if_ it was the Russians, it's likely that Vlad Putin is simply trying to tighten the noose around Hillary's neck. I don't think he actually wants to hang her out to dry - she'll be much more useful as a "president on a string" where Putin can control her. The last thing in the world that Putin wants is some unpredictable "loose cannon" as the President of the United States.

An actual security question by whitroth · 2016-07-25 05:00 · Score: 1

If we can get past the racists, and the 16-yr-olds who want to be "bad", and most of whom would like to get laid by an attractive black woman, but can't get laid at all because they're all losers...

Early reports of the hack said that they though the hackers had been there since perhaps December. Ok... when they sent in security during the breach that opened both sides databases up to Hillary and Bernie... what the *hell* were the security people *doing*? WHY DIDN'T THEY FIND ANY TRACES OF THE HACKERS? Were they actually *that* incompetent as "cybersecurity"?

mark

Re:Here's more credible evidence of Trump-Russia t by superwiz · 2016-07-25 05:56 · Score: 1

Regarding your comments about Trump: the fact that the only accusation they managed to dig up against him is that some of his businesses failed and that he's been sued is a pretty good indication that he's clean. His conglomerate participates in dozens if not hundreds of ventures. Some fail, some succeed. That's how business works. And virtually every successful business in the US has been sued... even the smallest business you can imagine would be foolish not to have some legal representation on retainer. That's just the society we live in. The barrier to suing someone with deep pockets is very low because the cost of litigation is universally larger than the cost of settling. Trump had failed businesses and there were times when he was in a technical bankruptcy (the value of his assets was lower than the value of his debt), but that did not mean that he was in an actual bankruptcy (failing to make payments to creditors). Orange County was in the same "bankruptcy " at some point during the 90's. And yet they never failed to provide any of the services. US government is in a constant state of such "bankruptcy" because it never collects as much in taxes as it spends (not even in today's world where it has record-high tax receipts).

Oh, and don't take this to be a cue to talk about "Clinton balancing the budget." Because I actually remember that year and I remember that it was

double booking

the same revenue (which was not even received yet) which allowed them to make that claim.

As for Trump's integrity, he actually bothers to get a divorce when he leaves his wife (unlike the Clintons staying in a marriage out of political convenience). Divorce is the honest way to leave your wife in case any one forgot.

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Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.

Re:Niggers Beware!!! by Kreplock · 2016-07-25 06:16 · Score: 1

And yet it's also true...

Twice in 2 months: coincidence by DavidMZ · 2016-07-25 06:30 · Score: 1

Last month the Russians hacked the DNC and released the anti-Trump playbook compiled by the Democratic Party. Now leaked emails with suspicion of Russian hackers... Is it a coincidence?

1. The democratic party should pay more attention to cyber-security.

2. Putin wants Clinton to fail?

Re:Wasserman-Shultz will get a job in administrati by Pieroxy · 2016-07-25 06:33 · Score: 1

DNC chairperson Wasserman-Shultz will be reward for her loyalty and service once Hillary gets into office.

Still think Hillary will get into office? Think again. It's getting less and less likely by the day now.

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Write boring code, not shiny code!

Re:Wasserman-Shultz will get a job in administrati by shutdown+-p+now · 2016-07-25 06:58 · Score: 1

This isn't entirely true - primaries are regulated in many states in some respects. For example, a "white-only primary" would be illegal. Some states require primaries to be open. And so forth.

Blame Scope [Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse] by Tablizer · 2016-07-25 06:58 · Score: 1

You seem to miss that HRC is not the DNC. Why would the DNC having poor network security have anything to do with Clinton, or reflect on her at all?

One could argue that ultimately the prez is held responsible by the public for just about everything regardless of whether they had direct control over it or not because they always have at least indirect influence. It's the old famous "The Buck Stops Here" situation.

That's fine, as long as applied evenly, such that Trump gets blamed for plagiarizing by the RNC speakers, for example.

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Table-ized A.I.

Re:Blame Scope [Re:Cheesy 80's movie excuse] by Aighearach · 2016-07-25 20:12 · Score: 1

This isn't even a government function. That's like blaming the President for Walmart. The "buck" in a political party stops wherever they decide it stops, same as in any group of citizens engaging in an activity together.

Re: They'll say anything by shutdown+-p+now · 2016-07-25 07:23 · Score: 1

There's a lot of chatter that Nusra is imminently going to break with al-Qaeda.

Given their platform and their activities, would it really change much?

Re:Wasserman-Shultz will get a job in administrati by CaptainLard · 2016-07-25 07:33 · Score: 1

Not counting the 25% margin in the popular vote I assume...

http://www.realclearpolitics.c...

Unless maybe 3M people were swayed by superdelegates somehow? Not saying you are wrong, just that superdelegates are almost certainly a red-herring in this case.

Re:Wasserman-Shultz will get a job in administrati by Magius_AR · 2016-07-25 08:29 · Score: 1

Sanders didn't lose because of any "internal schemes". He lost because less actual Democratic voters preferred him. That's all on him.

You seriously underestimate the power of perception in this country. The vast majority of the superdelegates (of which Debbie Wasserman Schultz is one of, btw) supported Hillary from day 1 of the primaries, with the prevailing message being "Bernie stands no chance at winning the primaries because of the massive delegate gap" (much of which was only due to superdelegates). Even a subtle change in perception can send massive ripples through the system.

Re:Don't. Just don't. by budgenator · 2016-07-25 08:55 · Score: 1

The Democrat's hold on Michigan come From Detroit, Flint and Lansing all strong UAW or former UAW towns, oh yeah, Dearborn, also known as "Little Bagdad"; some how I don't see Trump filling any of those areas.

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Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds

Bernie voters will be good little Democrats ... by drnb · 2016-07-25 09:12 · Score: 1

DNC chairperson Wasserman-Shultz will be reward for her loyalty and service once Hillary gets into office.

Still think Hillary will get into office? Think again. It's getting less and less likely by the day now.

Yes, Bernie primary voters will be good little Democrats and now vote for Hillary. Sealing their fate as irrelevant, as all people loyal to a political party are since their party already has their vote and doesn't need to do anything to keep it.

Re:Here's more credible evidence of Trump-Russia t by ganjadude · 2016-07-25 09:15 · Score: 1

you left out the 3rd option, they could simply be complete and utter retards

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have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same

Re:Here's more credible evidence of Trump-Russia t by ganjadude · 2016-07-25 09:25 · Score: 1

i can overlook them as they are the business world

now compare what he did to what clinton has done politically and tell me you trust her and she has any integrity

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have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same

Re:Wasserman-Shultz will get a job in administrati by T.E.D. · 2016-07-25 09:52 · Score: 1

You seriously underestimate the power of perception in this country. The vast majority of the superdelegates (of which Debbie Wasserman Schultz is one of, btw) supported Hillary from day 1 of the primaries, with the prevailing message being "Bernie stands no chance at winning the primaries because of the massive delegate gap

Go ask Republican Nominee Jeb Bush how much perception and blatant support from the national committee dictates everyone's votes.

Caught by brunnegd · 2016-07-25 10:13 · Score: 1

The DNC and Hillary got caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

Re:Here's more credible evidence of Trump-Russia t by unixisc · 2016-07-25 11:45 · Score: 1

A more assertive US? From the guy who wants the US to leave Ukraine to Russia, and overrode the Republican party on the platform issue? Stating that he wants to give Putin a free hand in Syria? Insists that there's no evidence that he kills journalists, political opponents and invades countries? The guy who's exchanged repeated back-and-forth praise with Putin on the campaign trail, with fawning language like "It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond" and "a very bright and strong leader"... so much of a bromance that people in Eastern Europe have started painting murals? Are you talking about the same Donald Trump here?

Trump said nothing about leaving Ukraine to Russia. On NATO, he has demanded that if US troops are to still be in Europe decades after the Cold War, then Europe needs to pay its fair share. That doesn't mean that he'll sign off to Russia everything Putin wants.

Trump is right on Syria, however. The policy of the US State Department, as well as the EU/NATO has been to pretend that nothing has changed since 1991. But since 9/11, Islam has clearly replaced Communism as the ideological threat to the West, and Trump's suggesting a partnership with Moscow reflects a recognition of that simple fact. Russia has been busy since 1991 fighting the Chechens, and other potential Muslim secessionist groups. The policy of the Bushes and Clintons and Obamas was to support these Jihadi campaigns against Moscow. Trump recognizes that Jihadi victories anywhere represent Jihadi victories everywhere, and is reversing policy on that. He doesn't have to endorse Russian incursions into the Donbass, but he is doing well by encouraging Putin to accept the US as a partner, instead of countries like Iran.

Another point: NATO is as outdated today as the League of Nations was after WWII. NATO existed for the explicit purpose of stopping a Communist conquest of all of Europe. That threat has ceased to exist since 1992. However, since 2001, there has been an Islamic threat to the rest of the world, and NATO, the way it currently exists, has Turkey as a member, while considering Russia as an adversary. But Russia is not out there backing an Islamic takeover of any place in the world. Turkey is, and under Erdogan, has been busy rediscovering its Turkic Islamic roots. They've been the gateway for Jihadis from the world over to go to Raqqa via Gaziantep to join ISIS. Any organization that includes Turkey but excludes Russia is completely anachronistic, and stuck in the 80s. If Trump is the only one who recognizes that Muslims are the enemy, all power to him!!!

Re:Wasserman-Shultz will get a job in administrati by Magius_AR · 2016-07-25 14:03 · Score: 1

Go ask Republican Nominee Jeb Bush how much perception and blatant support from the national committee dictates everyone's votes.

I don't follow your point. Bush was running against many other Republican candidates, all wishing for their party to align behind them. They took far too long to do so, which is why you never saw a mainstream candidate "dictated" by the powers-that-be.

A better example of my point is what happened to Cruz's polling numbers when it was just him, Trump, and Kasich. The party aligned behind Cruz, not behind Kasich (with the message being "he's the only one that can get the votes to beat Trump"). And the effect was obvious. Kasich's surge was far more muted compared to Cruz. However, it was also too late to stop the Trump train at that point.

If you want another example of perception vs reality, just look at third parties. I can't count the number of people who have literally made the statement "well I really wanted 3rd party candidate X, but I didn't want to throw my vote away." That's perception driving action at its finest right there. You have people literally choosing not to vote for the person they want because mainstream opinion has drilled it into them that it is a hopeless cause.

Re:Wasserman-Shultz will get a job in administrati by lucm · 2016-07-25 14:04 · Score: 1

What do you imagine would have happened had she won?

More stuff would have been stolen from the White House. More people would have bought a presidential pardon. More women would have been raped then would have had their dogs killed to scare them into withdrawing their complaints.

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lucm, indeed.

The important fact overlooked here by Zxern · 2016-07-25 15:12 · Score: 1

After so many years of investigations about emails, one would think these people would know better than to say foolish things in an email. How incredibly stupid are these people?

Zuckerberg always says.... by ripvlan · 2016-07-26 02:44 · Score: 1

Mark Zuckerberg said something years ago like "you shouldn't be doing anything you want to hide."

I agree with this DNC critical sentiment - WTF were they doing? Obviously something worth hiding. Those stolen emails shouldn't have contained anything worth talking about. But it does feed the conspiracy that DNC didn't like Bernie.

As for the emails where people made several off color remarks - that's just stupid being stupid and I'm sure can be found anywhere.

What difference does it make at this point? by ericfitz · 2016-07-26 04:05 · Score: 1

Had to be said :-)

Re:Niggers Beware!!! by coinreturn · 2016-07-26 06:43 · Score: 1

Actually, black people will mostly benefit from trump if he delivers the jobs he promising to give. This is why there is actually quite a lot of black trump supporters. I think they prefer to get a job from a racist than a pat on the head and a kick to the butt from a corporate terminator.

Except for the fact that he has no plan to generate all these jobs out of thin air, except the usual trickle-down lies of tax breaks for the uber-wealthy.

Re:Wasserman-Shultz will get a job in administrati by T.E.D. · 2016-07-26 11:33 · Score: 1

A better example of my point is what happened to Cruz's polling numbers when it was just him, Trump, and Kasich. The party aligned behind Cruz, not behind Kasich (with the message being "he's the only one that can get the votes to beat Trump"). And the effect was obvious

Sure is. Trump got a MAJORITY of the delegates from every single state from April 19th on. Pretty much the entire last 2 months. All consolidation did was make Trump stronger. So if anything, "insider support" only helps alternate candidates.

If you want another example of perception vs reality, just look at third parties. ... because mainstream opinion has ...

No, because of an effect called Duverger's Law. Any elective system with first-past-the-post voting is subject to it, and no amount of railing against the people trying to accurately report how voters behave is going to change that. The best a 3rd party vote could hope to do is destroy the weakest of the two existing parties, and the last time that happened in the USA was the middle of the 1800's. Give it a shot today if you like. Its your vote. But I wouldn't hold my breath.

Re:Here's more credible evidence of Trump-Russia t by jwhitener · 2016-07-28 09:34 · Score: 1

No one supports Clintons unless they are paid too or threatened.

Was Trump bribed or threatened when he said Hillary would make a great president in 2008?

Re:Wasserman-Shultz will get a job in administrati by Magius_AR · 2016-07-28 10:41 · Score: 1

No, because of an effect called Duverger's Law

Duverger's Law only works because of prevailing perception that there's only two parties that matter. In a vacuum, in a brand-new country that just stood up three parties and had an election, there would be no such effect. The effect is the result of perception of a wasted vote.

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