Despite The Email Story, Hillary Clinton Remains At The Top For 2016
Two weeks after the email story broke, there's no sign that Hillary Clinton is losing ground in the 2016 race.
It’s been just over two weeks now since we first learned, via a New York Times report, that Hillary Clinton had used a private email account for all her official communications while she was Secretary of State, a revelation that raised eyebrows on both sides of the aisle in Washington to say the least. Roughly a week later, Clinton made her first real public statement on the matter at a press conference which seemed to raise more questions than it answered and revealed, among other things, that Clinton and her advisers had been the sole parties to review her emails after she left office to decide what was “personal” and what was related to her State Department work. While that press conference didn’t go over well, and Republicans on Capitol Hill have signaled that they intend to pursue the issue further both as it relates to the ongoing Benghazi investigation and more generally, there have been few signs that Clinton is being harmed by the story. A Gallup poll last week, for example, showed that Clinton had higher favorable numbers than any of the potential Republican candidates for President notwithstanding the fact that her numbers had fallen significantly since she had served at Foggy Bottom., and indeed that she seemed to be running away with the race. Now, a new poll from CNN shows Clinton with massive leads both in the race for the Democratic nomination and in hypothetical General Election match-ups:
Washington (CNN) Hillary Clinton continues to be a dominant force heading into the 2016 presidential election, according to a new CNN/ORC poll. The former secretary of state maintains a broad lead over the field of potential Democratic challengers she could face in a nomination contest and sizable advantages over the leading contenders from the Republican side in general election match-ups.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush tops the possible field for the Republican Party’s nomination race, followed by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former neurosurgeon Ben Carson all in a tight cluster.
But none of the top candidates in this field gets within 10 points of Hillary Clinton in a series of hypothetical general election matchups.
Rand Paul comes closest, with 43% saying they’d be more likely to back him while 54% choose Clinton. The two candidates who currently top the GOP field, Bush and Walker, match up equally against Clinton, with each carrying 40% to her 55%. Huckabee gets 41% to Clinton’s 55% and Carson has 40% to Clinton’s 56%.
In the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton holds a nearly 50-point lead over Vice President Joe Biden, her closest competitor in the field, 62% to 15%. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren rounds out the top three on the Democratic side with 10%. No other potential candidate tops 5%.
Should Warren decide not to get into the race, Clinton stands to benefit more than others, gaining 5 points and holding a 67% to 16% advantage over Biden when Warren’s backers are re-allocated to their second-choice candidate. Notably, with Warren out of the race, Clinton surges from 67% support to 74% among Democratic women.
And Democrats broadly believe the party’s chances to hold the White House in 2016 are strongest with Clinton; 68% say so, while 30% say the party would have a better shot with someone else leading the ticket.
As always, one must keep in mind the caveat about early polls when looking at data like this. The Democratic primaries don’t begin for another eleven months, and the General Election is still some 20 months away. At the very least, though, it appears to be safe to say that there seems to be little doubt at this point that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee for President next year barring something completely unforeseeable at the moment. This polls shows the same thing that others in the past have shown, namely that Clinton has a seemingly insurmountable lead over her potential Democratic opponents, as well as Democrats who clearly aren’t going to get into the race such as Elizabeth Warren. As I’ve noted before, this lead is far more substantial, and far stronger, than the one Clinton had over Barack Obama at a comparable time in the 2008 election cycle, and there isn’t anyone in the potential Democratic field who could even come close to being the an Obama-like candidate. So, unless there’s some unforseen stumble on Clinton’s part, or a health issue, it’s pretty much a certainty that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic Party’s candidate for President in 2016.
When it comes to the General Election, it’s obviously far too early to say anything with certainty even based on these numbers. There are any number of things that could happen between now and November 2016 that could influence that outcome of the General Election, many of which will be beyond the control of either of the candidates. The domestic economy could take a downturn, or there could be an international crisis that would likely cause problems for the Democrat seeking to succeed President Obama, Alternatively, Republicans could find themselves making the same kind of mistakes they’ve made in the past which seems quite likely given the wide open GOP field and the likelihood that candidates will feel the need to pander to the most extreme elements of the party. Perhaps most importantly, we don’t know if Hillary Clinton will be able to get the same kind of turnout among minority and young voters that President Obama did in 2008 and 2012, factors which were hugely important to his victory in both of these elections. And, finally, since we don’t even know who the Republican nominee will be, most of these head-to-head match-up polls are purely hypothetical.
Notwithstanding all of these caveats, though, Chris Cillizza notes that Clinton’s General Election numbers are very good news for her, especially in light of the email “scandal”:
The general election numbers are equally rosy for Clinton. Her slimmest lead over a Republican is 11 points over Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. She leads former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, the two men considered the party’s most likely nominees, by 15 points. She has a 13 point edge over Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
And, horserace aside, there’s considerable agreement among partisans that Clinton is, by far, the Democrats’ best hope of holding the White House in 2016. Nearly seven in 10 (68 percent) said Democrats were better off with Clinton as their 2016 nominee while just 30 percent said they’d be better with someone else.
Now, Clinton’s numbers are not what they once were. And, as the Republican primary and the subsequent general election engage, the general election match-ups between Clinton and the GOP candidates will narrow. It’s simply not possible for a presidential nominee in this polarized climate to win by double digits — much less 15 points.
Still, for a Clinton team that has taken a load of incoming over the past fortnight, the CNN numbers have to buoy them. The CNN data point suggests that minds — especially on the Democratic side — are made up for Clinton and that nothing will change that fact. That’s something that any of the two dozen (or so) Republicans running or thinking about running for president in 2016 would kill for right about now.
Pretty much, because it means while they are fighting for the nomination among themselves, Clinton will basically be able to run a national campaign that will likely be a preview of her General Election campaign. That’s going to be one heck of a head start.
I think that in this case, the Democrats are really benefitting from low information voters. “Clinton fatigue” and grudges from the 2008 primary, the reason that the media and many liberals on the internet dislike her, is an elite phenomenon. The average person associates the Clinton brand with the 1990s, good times.
Why would one more faux scandal have any effect?
For decades now we’ve suffered thru example after example of no there there.
But keep trying.
Entirely predictable.
Everyone has taken sides on Hillary – and this dates back to 1993.
Those who hate her, hate her more. Many are ambivalent about her, however have no intention of voting Republican.
Unless there’s an email where she says – “Terrorist rebels storming the consulate in Benghazi? Bring it on! Oh, and remove all security from the consulate.” – unless there’s that, there will be a lot of posturing, an investigation or two or three, and the usual cheese balls will make appearances on the Sunday morning talkies to denounce the ongoing cover-up, etc.
@C. Clavin: Why would one more faux scandal have any effect?
Most of the Clinton scandals are actual scandals, unless you think only felony convictions are scandals.
And while Hillary probably deserves her current position, I sure hope we don’t come to regret it. The 2008 Clinton campaign was atrociously managed in many respects. It would be tragically hillarious if she were to implode and hand the GOP the White House and Congress.
Mike
Republicans who think the e-mail scandal will sink Hillary are the same ones who thought Solyndra would be a deciding issue in 2012.
No one will remember or care about this in 2 months – let alone 12 or 18.
One thing I keep thinking of is that we Americans hate baby-boomers. Just hate them. Selfish, self-involved, every other “self” word you can think of. The largest generation in our history, and we only elected two of them president. Clinton’s problem isn’t that she’s old, exactly; it’s that she’s one of them. Just seeing one of them back on the tv screen is dispiriting.
I suspect that a lot of the talk about Republicans having a deep bench and Democrats having a weak one is a subconscious reaction to that generation.
@MBunge:
That’s just crazy talk.
Maybe everybody who ever had a job and an email account knows that 90% of missives are about fresh cookies in the break room and collecting funny gifts for Suzie’s baby shower and consequently can’t give a rip about emails. I have the sense that our betters in the media are upset that people are failing to jump up and join them in being very concerned about this very concerning issue which has everyone very concerned.
Please, somebody give me a reason to vote for someone besides HRC. However, BS won’t work, no matter how concerning.
I think that very high government officials like the SoS handle information that must be handled secretly and confidentially. “Transparency” is a joke. Should FDR have published his communications with Churchill re WW II strategy? Do we communicate with Saudi Arabia re our approach to Israel’s military action in Gaza….I hope that kind of stuff is not on the front page.
@MBunge:
Perhaps, but they also tend to have little or no bearing on fitness to lead the nation.
Republicans, on the other hand, have this weird ability to do things that are clearly disqualifying, yet not generate commensurate reaction. Monica Lewinski has the nation up in arms, but war criminals in the White House gets a yawn. I guess the Reagan stockpile of teflon hasn’t been exhausted yet…
@DrDaveT: no, no, it’s simply another case of IOIYAR.
@Pinky:
Which perfectly explains why Bill Clinton is by far the most popular public figure in the country, and Hillary the most popular active politician..
I’m seeing very few undecideds. And I’m seeing one candidate well over 50%. And, here’s the kicker: this isn’t some new kid who’s sparked a temporary crush, this is one of the best-known public people in the country.
55%? With a known candidate? And this is before the Republicans drag themselves through the fever swamp for the next 18 months?
Wow. If she doesn’t come down with cancer, she’s got this thing won. I don’t think even lousy campaigning can screw this up for her.
@al-Ameda:
Also entirely predictable, Republican hypocrisy:
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/jeb-bushs-email-troubles-grow-more-serious
The really surprising numbers for me were Jeb Bush’s negatives. Where the hell is his base? Scott Walker is an unknown at this point, but he comes across as a creep. Rand Paul will never survive the primaries.
I’m usually the “don’t get cocky” guy, but damn.
@michael reynolds: Someone is going to make it through the Republican primaries, so why not Rand Paul? Is that any less plausible than nominating the architect of ObamaCare last time?
@MBunge: “Most of the Clinton scandals are actual scandals, unless you think only felony convictions are scandals.”
Name one — excepting her husband lying to avoid admitting he’d committed adultery.
What — travelgate? Vince Foster’s murder? A land deal in which they were victims?
There was never anything to any of them.
@Pinky: “One thing I keep thinking of is that we Americans hate baby-boomers. Just hate them. Selfish, self-involved, every other “self” word you can think of. The largest generation in our history, and we only elected two of them president. Clinton’s problem isn’t that she’s old, exactly; it’s that she’s one of them. Just seeing one of them back on the tv screen is dispiriting.”
What a shock you’re such a bigot you’re willing to slime an entire generation of Americans as being somehow less peachy keen than the fabulous you.
@michael reynolds: “The really surprising numbers for me were Jeb Bush’s negatives. Where the hell is his base?
On Wall Street.
@Gustopher:
Republicans badly want to fight, botch and then lose yet another war in the middle east, I don’t think Rand Paul will support that.
@Pinky:
“we Americans”?
You do realize that you just threw the so-called “Greatest Generation” under the bus? That’s right, you just implied that they did the worst job of parenting in, well, the history of our country.
Well, with the music that subsequent generations have produced, it’s no wonder that you guys are jealous.
@al-Ameda: Well, they were pretty racist. And sexist. And so on.
Generationally speaking, which is like saying nothing.
@al-Ameda: He’s not wrong, though. Talk to Millenials (and, although to a lesser extent, the Gen-X-ers) and you’ll see a whole lot of hate for Baby Boomers.
Take a trip over to Reddit, which is basically Millenial Central of the internet, and you can pretty much guarantee a thousand upvotes just by saying Baby Boomers suck.
Does that mean the “Greatest Generation” were bad parents? I don’t think so, although they were perhaps too indulgent (for which they can hardly be blamed, considering what they’d been through). The Baby Boomers had the benefit of the entire post-WW2 economic boom. They get blamed for screwing it up and leaving the Millenials to foot the bill as they (Baby Boomers) ride off into retirement.
Let’s look at some indisputable facts about Hillary and her e-mail.
1) She set up the server in January of 2009, before she even had her confirmation hearings for Secretary of State.
2) That means before she even took the office, she had already decided that she was going to retain control (and responsibility) for her e-mails, and not entrust them to the federal government.
3) The only logical reason for this was because she put a higher priority on protecting them from Congressional oversight and governmental control than protecting them from hackers, other nations, and other intelligence agencies.
4) At this time, the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, so she was protecting them from her fellow Democrats being able to see them.
5) This not only protected them from FOIA and public records laws, it also made them harder to subpoena.
6) During her tenure in office, she used her own e-mail server exclusively for any and all business, official and personal.
7) This means that any and all classified material she was given via e-mail was processed and stored on her private server.
8) Hillary received classified material via e-mail on numerous occasions, as documented in her own book.
9) Said private server had far less security provisions than those run by the federal government.
10) Said server was hacked on at least one occasion, as proven by the hacker “Guccifer” releasing e-mails from Sidney Blumenthal’s “clintonemail.com” account.
So, to summarize: before she was confirmed as Secretary of State, Hillary decided that it was more important to her to protect her e-mail from governmental oversight (even when that oversight would be by her fellow Democrats) than from hackers and our national enemies. She did not put anywhere near the maximum security on that server, which handled highly classified and sensitive documents, and allowed that server to be hacked on at least one occasion. And after she left office, she refused to turn over the server or its contents, simply asserting that she had complied with all rules, laws, policies and whatnot, but refused to allow anyone to verify her claims.
(mic drop)
@Jenos Idanian #13:
The ultimate conspiracy theorist arrives.
Benghazi
Fast and Furious
The IRS
FEMA Concentration Camps
Our Kenyan President
Area 51
Faked Moon Landings
No amount of facts, no amount of debunking, can stand in the way of his delusions. (or those of his sock puppets)
So to comment on this latest fever-dream would be pointless.
@C. Clavin: Cliffy, if you can point out one wrong thing I just said about Hillary’s e-mail actions, I will apologize and request my comment be deleted.
But that your first response is to bring up anything but says that you, as usual, want to draw attention from the topic at hand and to yourself in service to your delusions of adequacy.
Hillary put her political security above national security. Period.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Did you cut and paste that direct from your Benghazi delusions? You know…the ones that embarrassed you so? Sources matter. You are a source that has been made the fool so many times it boggles the mind.
But let’s play.
That is an opinion, as her thoughts are unknowable, and is not the only possible logical conclusion. In fact your screed is rife with opinions, and is not made up of indisputable facts at all.
Please request that your comment be immediately deleted as you claimed you would.
Unless of course…as we all know…you lack the spine to stand behind your claims.
@C. Clavin: Cliffy, feel free to post an alternate explanation for why Hillary insisted that her official electronic correspondence remain under her exclusive control and out of the hands of the federal government other than she wanted to protect it from the government.
You can’t, because 1) there isn’t one, and 2) you’re simply not that intelligent.
Hillary Clinton, while she was a key member of the national security team and 4th in the line of presidential succession, put her political security above national security.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
As I said…you lack the courage to back up your claims. Quelle surprise!!!
Go back to wherever it is you have been hiding.
Other “sure fire”, “can’t lose”, “in the bag ” candidates: Dewey, Hubert Humphrey, Ed Muskie, Gary Hart, Al Gore.
@Tyrell:
Dewey is the only one of those you name that were “sure fire” candidates. Also, for the record, Gore didn’t lose, his attorneys did.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Yes, she did. And she’ll take every state Barack Obama took last time and possibly add North Carolina.
What else you got?
@Mikey:
So true. I’m hard pressed to find someone among my friends who doesn’t have Boomer hate somewhere in their psyche that goes above and beyond the usual distaste for the previous generation. There’s a very real sense in my generation that those before us have ruined the world in irrecoverable ways and are unapologetic about it. The reflexive defensiveness, (“well, I personally didn’t do it!” and “yeah, Millennials suck even worse!”) doesn’t help when legitimate critiques are brought up. You can’t just take the good without the bad and there’s a lot of bad to be addressed. They are not leaving their country and their world to their children in better conditions then they received it in – the true test of any generation.
If so, then Boomers get the same blame for Millenials – something vehemently denied across the board. I’m hesitant to place blame on parents – at a certain point, generations must take credit for their own wins and losses. There’s always parental mismanagement and always child rebellion (hello, 60’s!). It’s not always Mommy and Daddy’s fault Junior can’t make it in life even if they’re given the world.
Where was all the outrage from the right when the Bush admin “lost” 5 million emails during the US Attorney scandal?
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/03/10/flashback-when-millions-of-lost-bush-white-hous/202820
@anjin-san:
The same place as the outrage from the right when Bush was losing 700K jobs a month…crickets.
Wait, there’s more:
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/03/10/flashback-when-millions-of-lost-bush-white-hous/202820
I’m going out for a little bit, so why don’t you people work on one consistent message? You got michael saying that it’s no big deal, annie still fixated on Bush from 8 years ago, cliffy using his usual incoherent frothing…
And just to keep on message: Hillary Clinton put her own political security ahead of national security and maintained classified documents on her private e-mail server, which was woefully unsecured and hacked on at least one occasion. And that’s just fine with a bunch of people here, apparently, because REPUBLICANS!!!!!
The Greatest Generation hates boomers. Millenials hate boomers. But you know who hates them the most? Boomers. They have no respect for their cohort.
Shorter Jenos – I don’t give a crap about the issue, I just want fodder for partisan political attacks.
In other news, the sun came up today.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Have you backed up your previous claim yet?
No?
Then just STFU until you grow a spine.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
I speak for myself.
Yes, Hillary did something stupid.
No, it doesn’t matter.
@C. Clavin:
Huh? The right didn’t care about the recession? They may not have agreed with you on what to do about it, but that’s different. Your assertion just doesn’t make sense. I remember it being one of the most interesting times in policy circles, with passionate disagreement and a real elevation of the discussion.
@Pinky:
Well they certainly cared about it after they shifted the blame for it to Obama…
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Actually, there is one – the one that was initially said. She wanted to only carry one device and you can’t put Federal Government email on a non-Federally-managed device and you can’t put personal email on a Federally Managed device.
Only solution is to carry two devices (which most do) or to not use Government email.
Now, I think that she shouldn’t have done that and shouldn’t have been allowed to BUT that is the most logical reason, matches what was originally said, and has a very different motivcation than the one you are presuming.
@Pinky:
Really? Everyone on the right is flipping out about Clinton’s emails. No one on the right flipped out about Bush’s missing emails. And no one on the right was flipping out about Bushs handling of the economy in ’08 either. It’s about team scoring for you folks in the cult. Leapin’ lizards – McCain was saying that the economies fundamentals were strong. Hell…I’m sure most Republicans were just saying we just needed to cut some more taxes on the wealthy.
@C. Clavin: You’re remembering it wrong.
Well, Jenos, you can both apologize and ask to have your comment deleted.
Your very first claim was that:
“1) She set up the server in January of 2009, before she even had her confirmation hearings for Secretary of State.”
[Emphasis added]
And then you stated:
“… if you can point out one wrong thing I just said about Hillary’s e-mail actions, I will apologize and request my comment be deleted.”
As you can see from the State Dept. transcript, her hearing began at 9:30 AM on January 13, 2009 – and ended at 4:35 PM the same day.
http://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ei/rm/113814.htm
BUT her server was NOT created until January 13, 2009 – at 8:37:32 PM … AFTER her confirmation hearing.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/03/02/hacked-emails-indicate-that-hillary-clinton-used-a-domain-registered-the-day-of-her-senate-hearings/
Which provides a link to the Registry record:
http://who.is/whois/clintonemail.com
You can look at the Creation Date Time Stamp – it was setup AFTER her confirmation hearing.
Apology accepted – now ask to have your comment deleted as you promised.
You know what’s funny is the way Republicans have inadvertently helped Hillary. What was the single biggest electoral concern for Hillary? Clinton fatigue. What’s the cure for Clinton fatigue? Run against a guy named Bush.
Walker provides his own cover, because the second biggest concern about Hillary is that she’s unlikable. But compared to Scott Walker? Hillary is just tedious, Walker comes off as a douche.
I don’t really think there’s been anything quite like this, at least not in my memory. She has 100% name recognition combined with a favorable rating of 53%, including 46% among men, and a spread over her likely opponents of 10-15 points, two years out. . . and it’s all in the wake of this email b.s.
Serious question: has anyone ever seen any candidate in a stronger position this far out?
@michael reynolds: Yes, Hillary did something stupid.
No, it wasn’t stupid. It was very deliberate and conscious and done with careful forethought.
And it wasn’t “so she didn’t have to carry two devices.” Two devices aren’t that heavy, and devices have been capable of managing multiple e-mail accounts for quite some time. And she has people who could carry that second device.
And I will correct my earlier comment: I misremembered one factoid. The server was set up the day she was confirmed, before she took office.
But once again, this creates some truly entertaining precedents. If the Secretary of State can exclusively use private e-mail for the exchange of highly classified documents, what other high-ranking officials can do this in the future to evade public scrutiny and legally-obligated oversight? Or, as I’m sure is true, does this fit under the wonderful rule of “when a law might benefit Republicans and/or hurt Democrats, it doesn’t apply?”
@Pinky:
They hate their children?
@KM:
Boomer-hate was for the longest time (and for young people, we’ll say that’s a decade, half a decade) pretty much a fad among Millennials who knew a little history in high school, inherited from Generation X. There was nothing generation-wide that caused Millennials to hate Boomers with a real passion until 2008, when the floor dropped out of the economy and the oldest Millennials (like myself and those some years older) had just graduated college into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
And then our mostly Baby Boomer elected officials, seeing the test of the Greatest Generation ahead, armed with the hindsight of history when facing similar tests, did what was done. It is a matter of historical record now. Despite all the retrospectives about the music and about the politics and about the counterculture, despite all the navel-gazing, something tells me there won’t be a cadre of young reporters doing documentaries about how great Baby Boomers were.
Again, generationally speaking, this is like saying nothing. I have a lot of opinions that don’t have knowledge underneath them, and all of my generational opinions are like that. 🙂
@Pinky:
ORLANDO, FLA.) – John McCain tried once again to assure voters that the “fundamentals” of the American economy are strong, despite the ongoing financial meltdown.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mccain-says-fundamentals-of-us-economy-are-strong/
Another post on poll numbers 20 months before the election, Doug. I look forward to your future posts lamenting the “horse race” focus of political reporting at the expense of real issues.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Devices may be technically able to do so but federal cyber-security rules prohibit adding personal emails to federally-managed devices.
Could she have carried two devices? Absolutely. In fact, she should have. But it is not unreasonable not to want to. I don’t carry two for the very same reasons (though many of my peers do, particularly one of the VPs who used to hold a high position with the FBI).
That doesn’t change that she was wrong to do so, only that your insistence that it could only be political isn’t the only plausible explanation.
@michael reynolds: I bet Henry Clay probably looked this good before some of his candidacies. Didn’t have the benefit of mass communication in his day though.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Have you asked to have your comment deleted yet???
What is it like to walk around like a jelly-fish…bereft of a backbone?
Don’t be concerned. Even though I have become like unto the Platonic ideal of numeracy, monadic in my features, I am still abiding.
@Pinky:
Really?
Someone else linked to McCain.
Here’s what Steve King (Nutjob/Iowa) said in backing up McCain on 9.30.08:
The very next quarter the GDP collapsed 9%…in one single quarter.
@michael reynolds: I think Rand Paul will find his way to switch from a principled isolationist view to a principled bomb-bomb-Iran view, if that’s what needs to happen to get the nomination.
He did sign the letter trying to screw up the negotiations, for instance, and then immediately said he did it to strengthen Obama’s hand once it became clear how stupid everyone thought it was.
@Mikey:
Someone kept telling them to be themselves, and who was that if not the parents? At some point, the parents should have realized their kids were assholes, and the last thing that they should be doing is “being themselves”.
@1:
Polling in Henry Clay’s day was some newspaperman hanging out at his local bar asking the other rummy’s what they thought.
Which somehow sounds like an improvement, really.
@al-Ameda: “Gore didn’t lose, his attorneys did” I certainly agree with that. But Al had a full head of steam heading into that election: Clinton’s popularity, eight years of prosperity, things were fairly calm overseas. It seemed to be his election to lose. I don’t know if he just couldn’t connect or what. I voted for him: I thought he had some good ideas. Forget Florida. He should have won by a wide margin. He didn’t even carry his own state.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Dude, you keep saying this. It’s a very serious charge. I’ve yet to see any evidence she did so.
Seems to me you’ve inferred something and are now presenting it as an indisputable fact, despite the lack of confirmation.
@Gustopher:
I have two teenagers living at home. My view of parenting is this: if by age 16 you haven’t killed them, you’re doing fine as a parent. Everything else is extra credit.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
None. Congress changed the law in 2014.
No, it fits under the wonderful rule of “laws that don’t exist and aren’t passed until years after you leave office don’t apply to you.” We won’t even get into the utterly unprovable nature of any allegations that she’s actually held back records to begin with.
That said, you can probably expect this one to die on the vine, since it’s now impossible to discuss the issue without discussing Clinton AND the ostensible Republican frontrunner at the same time. The brush that tars Clinton also tars Bush, ergo it becomes non-productive for Republicans to pursue it. That’s aside from the fact that people outside the teabagger rage bubble don’t seem to give much of a damn about it. Politically, it’s dead in the water.
@Gustopher:
By then it was too late.
Seriously, though…can you really blame people who grew up during the Great Depression and then endured and helped win WW2 for wanting to indulge their kids, especially given the tremendous post-war economic boom? They wanted to give their children a better life. Unfortunately, it seems too many didn’t realize it would have been better to make them earn it…
@Mikey:
Jenos? No …. When would Jenos EVER do something like that? 😀
If you’re going to cite that comment from McCain, you should note that (a) he’s not exactly a classic right-winger, (b) a lot of other people on the right had been talking about the economic problems for months, (c) he subsequently suspended his campaign for a few days in order to try to broker economic legislation, and (d) depending on how you look at it, the economic crisis of 2008 wasn’t due to economic “fundamentals”. Admittedly, (d) is more of a word game, but it was during a campaign, which are word games, and besides, he was trying to persuade people not to panic during a bank crisis.
Speaking as someone who actively dislikes HRC, but will probably end up voting for her anyway (see Reynolds’ comment about any likely GOP candidate itching to land US troops in the Middle East, again):
The personal email thing looks bad, but is pretty much within error of what I expect for politicians (especially politicians who have hostile relationships with the opposition). If someone can actually find something serious that she hid using the personal email server, fine, let’s hear it. Otherwise, I really have a hard time getting worked up over this.
And I think that’s were the GOP has really screwed themselves. We’ve been hearing high volume implications that HRC has done terrible things for so long, without any real evidence of terrible things, that I don’t think anyone is paying attention except for the press (who loves scandal), hand-wringing Dems (who love self-flagellation), and the GOP base (who would never have voted for HRC to begin with).
You really don’t know any powerful/wealthy people do you? Because if you tell a person who has some real juice that they have to carry two devices for email because, the rules, they will tell you “that’s fine for you skippy, for me, not so much.
I’ll never forget going to an event with one of my old bosses, he simply drove right past about sixteen parking attendants who were waving their arms and telling him he could not park beyond the main parking area. When I asked him about it, he said “I did not by a 200k car so that a guy who makes $8 an hour could tell me where I have to park”
@Pinky:
Not really. He suspended his campaign for a few days in order to try to pull a “here comes John to save the day” political stunt.
When he showed up, he very nearly derailed legislation that was being carefully negotiated, and had been for quite a while at that point. Neel Kashkari and others that I’ve spoken with about the sequence of events who were actually there were apoplectic about it. “Showboating” was the kindest thing they had to say about him. Much of the rest isn’t repeatable here …
@Pinky:
Sure…after over a year of gradual collapse they began to notice when their Wall Street Overlords shit the bed.
They ignored the housing bubble burst in 2006.
They whistled past the graveyard when the slide actually started in July/August of ’07.
But when Lehman Bros. collapsed in Sept. of ’08…doh…that got their attention.
So your telling of it says that they were clearly concerned about the economy…because they noticed over a year after the collapse actively began?
Sorry…that dog don’t hunt.
@Pinky:
I think you can find that in the Guiness Book of World Records under “stupidest campaign stunt ever”
@C. Clavin:
Not entirely a fair analysis. Lehman had been in trouble for quite a while, and this was not exactly a secret either on the Street or at Treasury. Paulson rode Fuld for over a year, demanding a capital raise, and the Street made its opinion of Lehman’s viability clear – they slammed its stock price. Hell, Dick’s own division heads came close to staging a coup months before Lehman collapsed in an effort to force him to change course and shore up Lehman’s hemorrhaging, over-levered balance sheet.
Paulson & Co. screwed up badly by refusing to step in and shore up Lehman, and to their credit they’ll admit this point now. To be fair, Fuld as well torpedoed several deals that would have saved Lehman in some form, and the Brits dealt the final blow that killed Lehman, so there is a nice platter of blame to go around for everyone, but to assert that nobody noticed Lehman was dying until it imploded is quite off the mark.
Thanks, Jenos, for yet again proving your total lack of moral character.
You have your #1 “Indisputable fact” [(1) She set up the server in January of 2009, before she even had her confirmation hearings for Secretary of State] proven WRONG …
And yet despite your promise that you “… if you can point out one wrong thing I just said about Hillary’s e-mail actions, I will apologize and request my comment be deleted.” – you do neither.
That’s no surprise. Disappointing, indeed – but not a surprise. Try working on improving your character before posting again. It’d be greatly appreciated by a great many.
@HarvardLaw92:
Yes…you are correct.
But Republican politicians and the Bush Administration pretended all was hunky-dory…in the same way that the millions of missing Bush e-mails were ignored, while Clinton’s private server is the current National Security crisis…which is the context of this (admittedly pointless) discussion.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
You do know that the vast majority, if not all, classified communications in the state department take place on cryptographic systems not connected to the internet, not on e-mail, right?
@C. Clavin:
I’m undecided about that, for the reason that really understanding the magnitude of the problem at that point entailed a pretty advanced understanding of finance – particularly esoteric concepts like synthetic derivatives and how the whole structure was comprised. Few people really understand that even now, and far fewer did back then.
People tend to evaluate situations in terms of the points that they understand, and tune out or rationalize the rest. Strictly from a mortgage standpoint, the problem was massive, but not remotely on the level of economic collapse. The magnified leverage created in the system through derivatives and the interconnected distribution of that leverage are what would have brought the financial system to its knees, if not collapsed it entirely.
However, many, if not most, of the people who at the time had the power to do something about it didn’t understand the situation beyond “mortgage”, and trying to get them on board entailed first giving them the equivalent of a graduate level course in finance just to be able to have the discussion.
@KM:
I’m hard pressed to find someone among my friends who doesn’t have Boomer hate somewhere in their psyche that goes above and beyond the usual distaste for the previous generation.
I can’t speak for the rest of our generation, but I do get tired of reading articles about how all of us lazy, self-absorbed millennials can’t grow up and get real jobs in the economy that baby-boomers ruined, so that we can be good little children and pay into a social security program that will bankrupt the country long before we retire . . .
@HarvardLaw92:
Point taken.
But I draw for a living…and I was aware of the housing bubble bursting and tons of people being upside-down in their mortgages because they’d been using their houses as a credit card…and I could see my 401K shrinking faster than my private parts in the Pacific Ocean…long before September ’08 when Lehman finally collapsed.
People tend to evaluate situations in terms of the voices they are exposed to…and Republicans are always busy protecting Republicans, but more so in the aftermath of an historic Foreign Policy blunder. To a large extent it’s a problem with the right-wing echo chamber and those who rely solely on it for their information. That’s a truly dangerous problem. IE: if you are getting all your economic information from Stephen Moore and Art Laffer and Larry Kudlow…as Scott Walker is…then you are never, ever, going to see the truth…and you will go around saying “the fundamentals of the economy are strong”.
@CET:
The Social Security will Bankrupt the Country is a lie sold by people who want to bankrupt the country..
Dear Moderators:
In my initial comment, I asserted that Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server was set up before her confirmation hearing. It turns out that I was off by a few hours — it was set up later the same day. I regret the error, and request that my earlier comment be deleted and any record of my misstatement be properly purged and memory-holed, so I can pretend that it never existed.
Let’s look at some indisputable facts about Hillary and her e-mail.
1) She set up the server in January of 2009, the day of her confirmation hearings, before she even took office as Secretary of State.
2) That means before she even took the office, she had already decided that she was going to retain control (and responsibility) for her e-mails, and not entrust them to the federal government.
3) The only logical reason for this was because she put a higher priority on protecting them from Congressional oversight and governmental control than protecting them from hackers, other nations, and other intelligence agencies.
4) At this time, the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, so she was protecting them from her fellow Democrats being able to see them.
5) This not only protected them from FOIA and public records laws, it also made them harder to subpoena.
6) During her tenure in office, she used her own e-mail server exclusively for any and all business, official and personal.
7) This means that any and all classified material she was given via e-mail was processed and stored on her private server.
8) Hillary received classified material via e-mail on numerous occasions, as documented in her own book.
9) Said private server had far less security provisions than those run by the federal government.
10) Said server was hacked on at least one occasion, as proven by the hacker “Guccifer” releasing e-mails from Sidney Blumenthal’s “clintonemail.com” account.
So, to summarize: before she was confirmed as Secretary of State, Hillary decided that it was more important to her to protect her e-mail from governmental oversight (even when that oversight would be by her fellow Democrats) than from hackers and our national enemies. She did not put anywhere near the maximum security on that server, which handled highly classified and sensitive documents, and allowed that server to be hacked on at least one occasion. And after she left office, she refused to turn over the server or its contents, simply asserting that she had complied with all rules, laws, policies and whatnot, but refused to allow anyone to verify her claims.
(mic drop)
@humanoid.panda: You do know that the vast majority, if not all, classified communications in the state department take place on cryptographic systems not connected to the internet, not on e-mail, right?
Not all. In her book, she refers several times to getting alerts and other classified information via e-mail. And since all her e-mail was routed through her server, then this material went through her server.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
No argument that she acted stupidly in some respects.
That said – and this is important so you’ll want to write it down – it does not matter.
Republicans can’t attack her on the issue and, as far as anyone can tell, aside from the fringeball nutjobs who were never going to vote for her anyway, the voters seem not to care about this. They have shrugged it off. It won’t cost her any states that she was never going to win, and it won’t cost her any of the states she’s likely to carry.
You are shouting at the rain.
Stop. Just … stop …
@Jenos Idanian #13:
I just used the Amazon search function for her memoir:
http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Choices-Hillary-Rodham-Clinton-ebook/dp/B00C69EP1S/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1426791693&sr=1-2&keywords=hillary
The words email or e-mail are not in the text, and the word mail appears in the context of Cuban dissidents acces to it. The word alert appears twice, both in the context of embassy officials in Benghazi and Baghdad issuing alerts when their compounds were attacked. The word message appears several times, but always in context of diplomatic negotiations.
You are going have to cite your sources.
@humanoid.panda: The word “classified” appears 8 times, never in context of emails or personal messages.
@HarvardLaw92: I dispute your characterization of her decision as “stupid.” As I said before, it required considerable forethought, as well as the knowledge, assistance, and tacit approval of a lot of other people, at least one of whom (just going by statistical averages) should have realized it was “stupid” and said so. That it occurred, went on for her entire tenure in office, and went unnoticed for years after she left office makes the “stupid” excuse totally implausible.
As far it not mattering… that’s an admission I am quite surprised to see so many make. The action was grossly improper, violated national security, and was motivated by pure ego. That so many on your side find that irrelevant is the kind of accusation I would make, and get roundly denounced for it. But for it to be so boldly declared is… quite surprising.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
You were wrong about far more than that…the predominance of the screed is opinion presented as irrefutable fact.
Man up a bit.
Or go away.
@humanoid.panda:
You can’t possibly be insinuating that Jenos made something up to attack a Democratic politician. Such a thing would be unheard of.
@C. Clavin:
Right, and had mortgage defaults been the sole extent of the problem, we would have had a fairly ugly recession, of moderate magnitude, and little government direct intervention (note I did not say none …) would have been required. That’s how most people understood the problem – bank lends money, bank holds mortgage on books, mortgage defaults, bank loses some money.
Traditional mortgage lending is self-limiting due to capital requirements. There are hard limits to how much capital a bank, any bank, can have exposed from a risk perspective. We force these limits by requiring them to keep capital in reserve. Lots of people knew that the housing market was in trouble long before it popped, myself included. It didn’t take much analytical ability or knowledge of finance to understand that when we started seeing mortgages showing up which never required the borrowers to make a payment.
That having been said, the real problem was not mortgages. Not even remotely. It was derivatives. To put it colloquially, a derivative is a bet. Nothing more. With mortgages, you can lend X, repackage X and sell X. With derivatives, you can lend infinity, repackage infinity and sell infinity, because you have theoretically moved the risk off of your books. There were, and largely still are, no limits on the amount of risk that can be piled up via derivatives.
We even went so far as to create derivatives made up of derivatives. Short version – a bet on a bet. It’s akin to saying “I’ll bet you $100 that you will lose your bet with Steve for $100”.
That was the extent of the problem. Derivatives magnified the total exposure from mortgage defaults some 32 times – and even that is best guess. It’s probably higher.
It’s easy to explain to someone why “we stand to lose X from mortgage defaults.” It’s considerably harder to explain to them why we’ll really lose 32X. To even begin to explain it, you have to give them a crash course in derivatives – and even when you do, they still usually don’t get it.
Add in the fact that the derivatives markets are entirely unregulated – few people outside of the Street even knew that the risk magnification was going on until the situation popped and the chained nature of the defaults began to become evident. It’s one of the reasons that Lehman was allowed to fail – nobody grasped that Lehman failing would take down AIG due to the magnitude of AIG’s exposure to Lehman’s risk via swaps, or that AIG would take everybody else down with it because it was equally exposed to everybody else via swaps- until it was happening. At that point, it became a case of reacting and trying to stay ahead of the collapse.
@C. Clavin: I owned up to my error, corrected it, and requested that the error be deleted.
You have yet to say anything of any substance whatsoever. For all your flaws, at least you’re consistent.
BTW, for anyone actually interested in the topic (which, obviously, excludes Cliffy): Hillary was exceptionally “Clintonian” in her statements on this. She said ” “I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email.” Note that she did not say whether or not she received any classified material, or mention sensitive material. Given such a specific denial, and her lengthy experience and renowned intelligence, I believe that it’s valid to assume that her phrasing was chosen very carefully and she did receive classified material, and did send and receive sensitive material. Especially given her admission in her book to getting alerts and notices from the State Department via e-mail.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
I would take your screed more seriously if you had bothered to mention “Jeb Bush” even once. That you didn’t tells me all that I need to know about the nature of your problem here.
She acted stupidly in some respects (from a policy standpoint) and prudently in others (from a political standpoint). She knew, even back then, that she intended to run again, and she took steps to limit opposition research. That’s how the world works.
What she didn’t do is act illegally. She didn’t break the law, so legally that goes nowhere for you.
A pretty good sized chunk of the electorate grasps that Republicans couldn’t care any less about security risks or policy violations – given that they have committed the same sins with regularity – but are instead interested in mining the material to use against her from a political standpoint. In that context, they stop caring about it because it’s just more of the same.
So politically it goes nowhere for you as well.
If you want to use it as a rationale for griping about her presidency once she wins, which looks more and more likely at this point, feel free.
But we’ll characterize it as more of the same from you, and write it off as partisan rancor which we don’t care about, so that goes nowhere for you too.
But hey, whatever helps you sleep at night 😀
@humanoid.panda: Here’s one handy example. Here’s another.
@HarvardLaw92: I would take your screed more seriously if you had bothered to mention “Jeb Bush” even once. That you didn’t tells me all that I need to know about the nature of your problem here.
Why the hell would I mention the former governor of a state in the context of discussion of the actions of a former Secretary of State? Are the laws and regulations and security concerns of the two offices the same?
I would take your defense of Hillary if it wasn’t a knee-jerk “BUT REPUBLICANS!” whine. Especially since he left office two years before Hillary became Secretary of State, so you don’t even have “it happened at the same time!” to whine.
Oh, and while it’s totally irrelevant, I think very little of John Ellis Bush. As little as possible.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Citation omitted, and in the context of my admittedly very basic text search, required.
I asserted that Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server was set up before her confirmation hearing. It turns out that
I was off by a few hours — it was set up later the same day.I was wrong.FTFY
Life’s too short to deal with this kind of crap. Especially mine. I’m gonna go live a little for a few hours. If I feel like checking in to hear the latest round of whining and immature silliness, it’ll most likely be after 7 or 8 hours.
No promises about my sobriety at that point…
@anjin-san: It was just fine as is, but if you want to be that much of an immature, pedantic twit, I’ll put it in my own words.
Did you finally earn your a-hole merit badge, or do you still have more work to do for it?
@Jenos Idanian #13: One your sources is from a book by someone else, and cites an e-mail that is neither classified nor sensitive- just an alert that a newspaper published something. The other link says nothing about email, just about receiving messages from the StateDep operational center, which I can assure you does not send things by email.
@ Jenos –
Take as long as you need. A day, a month, a year – forever. No one misses you when you are not around.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Oh, I don’t know – maybe because they both did this private email thing and they are both running for the presidency? If it taints her suitability for the presidency, it taints his as well.
Yea, oddly they are. In fact, they are worse from Bush’s perspective, since Florida laws governing what he did were already on the books when he did it. The laws governing what she did weren’t passed until close to 2 years after she left office, and even then do not rise to the level of criminality.
This is why your argument fails. She didn’t break the law. Even if she had, it wouldn’t have been a criminal offense – she’d have been subject to personnel action by her supervisor.
Let’s see – I acknowledge that they both did problematic things. You scope lock on one of them doing problematic things, but admit that you don’t care about the other.
So which one of us is whining? With that having been said, I’m not going to enable your whining any further. You’re on ignore now. Have fun talking to yourself (or maybe one of your sockpuppets will show up and you can have a conversation with them).
Oh wait, that’s the same thing. My bad … 😀
Translation: I am getting my ass handed to me, as usual, and I don’t like that – so I’m going to go throw a tantrum. I’ll be back later.
Don’t worry about the sobriety. I can assure you that most of just assume you’re drunk 24/7. 😀
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Your thoughts on maturity might be taken more seriously if you had not pulled your patented “Everyone else is stupid, I’m a victim, now I’m taking my marbles and going home” routine for the umpteenth time 🙂
@Jenos Idanian #13:
No, jelly-fish boy.
You owned up to one error among a host of errors.
Keep in mind that you are the one that claimed to be presenting irrefutable facts that were without errors, and established the bar by which your comment would be judged.
So really…who’s the one whining here?
@anjin-san:
Once again, anjin-san speaks for the collective. And I don’t know, maybe they have elected you. But despite your insistence to the contrary, the cool kids don’t run the school. I wish Jenos fact-checked before he posted, but I miss him when he’s not around.
@Pinky:
Well, that does speak volumes about you.
@Pinky:
Yea, and I wish you had produced even a single citation that showed liberals on OTB think dead cops is a Christmas present.
@HarvardLaw92:
So…if I read Jenos’ comments when I’m drunk, they will make sense???
@C. Clavin:
LOL, anything is possible.
@Pinky: “If you’re going to cite that comment from McCain, you should note that (a) he’s not exactly a classic right-winger, (b) a lot of other people on the right had been talking about the economic problems for months, (c) he subsequently suspended his campaign for a few days in order to try to broker economic legislation, and (d) depending on how you look at it, the economic crisis of 2008 wasn’t due to economic “fundamentals”. Admittedly, (d) is more of a word game, but it was during a campaign, which are word games, and besides, he was trying to persuade people not to panic during a bank crisis.”
Dude — “I was wrong.” Three syllables. Nine letters. Isn’t that a lot better than typing all of this ludicrous gibberish as a way to cover for saying something stupid. “I was wrong.” Give it a try sometime. Believe me, you’ll never run short on opportunities.
@dmhlt: “Try working on improving your character before posting again.”
But Jenos works on his characters all the time. Most recently he’s been appearing as James Pearce or something — with the Palin/Reagan picture. Sometimes he likes to be Munchbox. And I still have fond memories for Hoot Gibson, who lasted about ten minutes before he was outed…
@CET: “I can’t speak for the rest of our generation, but I do get tired of reading articles about how all of us lazy, self-absorbed millennials can’t grow up and get real jobs in the economy that baby-boomers ruined, so that we can be good little children and pay into a social security program that will bankrupt the country long before we retire . . .”
Well, maybe your little friends should pull themselves together and vote not just in presidential elections but in midterms so that the old, white, conservative demographic can’t put their hateful, stupid, and destructive candidates in office to continue to bankrupt the country to shovel money at billionaires. I mean, sure, it’s fun to whine about how icky a huge percentage of the population is simply because they happened to be born between two arbitrary dates, and actually doing something is hard, but give it a chance.
@anjin-san: Look, that’s the price you pay for sounding very similar to most everyone else on a site. You don’t stand out. If you covered the names in the comments section, would you be able to pick out who’s who? Or even pick out your own comments? There are a couple of unique voices on this site, and no offense, but you’re not one of them.
@C. Clavin: “So…if I read Jenos’ comments when I’m drunk, they will make sense???”
If they do, you’re drinking the wrong thing.
@Pinky: Oh, wait, that is something you do – you speak for the cool kids. So you do have a style.
@wr:
And that is exactly why I vote in everything from city elections on up. But thank you for your concern.
@wr: Oops, that’s James P, not James Pearce. Sorry, Mr. Pearce!
@Pinky:
And I’ve never claimed to be. Nor made a secret of the fact that 98% of my participation on OTB is simply things I dash off while I am taking a two minute break from doing something else. If I am going to put a lot of effort into writing, it’s going to be when I am getting paid to do it in most cases (and I do get paid reasonably well to write on a consistent basis). Someone with the kind of talent Michael has can just make comments on the fly and they are memorable. Most of us can’t.
Does this really have anything to do with your inability to come up with one, just one site that supports your ludicrous “dead cops” comment?
@wr:
As luck would have it, Mr. P magically showed up on another thread just after Jenos left.
At this point he’s not even valuable as humor.
@HarvardLaw92: Here’s the routine: We get “Jenos,” who pretends to be reasonable essentially by accusing everyone else of all the annoying rhetorical ltricks he’s been busted on, while making “arguments” based on “facts” that are really ignorant opinions presented as truth. He tries this for a while, then claims to be the only honest poster seeking after truth as everyone else plays partisan tricks, and he flounces off. Then comes James P., who holds pretty much the same politics, but doesn’t feel compelled to be taken seriously as a debater — he just lays out the craziest right wing nonsense hoping to piss people off. And then, when people start ignoring him, out comes Munchbox, which just spews hostility and insults.
There are probably others, as well. Imagine having so little going on in your life this seems like a useful way to spend so much time…
@anjin-san:
Like I said back then, I’ll probably only respond to one in two dozen comments like this. But it’s probably been that many since I responded, so: You’re falsely characterizing what I said. What I said, I meant. What I said wasn’t even controversial. People on this site, and on the left in general, inflame racial hatred in a way that not only encourages violence, but practically taunts people into doing it. You can’t give sermons 24/7 that police are the enemy of the black man and then act surprised when people take up arms against the police. If some of the OTB commenters meant the stuff that they actually say, and thought through the implications of it, and truly believed those implications, then they’d look upon the shooting of two police officers as an early Christmas present. I said that the only downside I could think of for them is that it wasn’t two white officers – well, it finally was, a week ago.
As I said, I don’t typically remember your comments, so I don’t recall if you were one of those anti-police cheerleaders. If you were, and you meant the stuff you said, and believed all the implications of it, then I’d expect you to be happy that two Ferguson officers were shot. I don’t know what that has to do with this thread, though. I’m not going to make every thread about this, but if you keep bringing it up, I will reply every two dozen times or so.
@dmhlt:
Seconded.
@CET: I graduated in May of ’09. I’ve lived in four different states since then. My friends I’ve met are scattered to winds in over 20 states all living in actual cities in those states. Yet all I read about from boomers is how we millennials are lazy. How we are messing up the country because we don’t buy houses or new cars. How we are the worst because a large cohort of our generation doesn’t care about voting. What does it honestly matter? I ask as an a regular voter like yourself. The generation that saw the most extreme economic boom the world has likely ever seen leveraged every advantage this country’s economy has ever seen for lower taxes and free trade agreements so the garbage they buy will be cheaper. Then I keep getting lectures from boomers about us, whilst they have not one good accomplishment to hang their hat on. Maybe someday we’ll pay for all the sh!t they got that they didn’t want to pay for because taxes were too high but they got used to a standard of living. Maybe someday they’ll retire and allow those of us who have actually worked to try and live the American dream have a place to succeed. But I bet that won’t happen and we’ll continue to be used as pawns by both sides of the aisle as a prop to complain about unfunded government programs and passing that debt onto us. Or maybe the boomers can face the fact they gave us millennials the shittiest economy to come of age in in the past 70 years and maybe have some ounce of sympathy for people coming of age and having far less opportunities than they had, even the f^ck ups. I doubt that actually happens because we are self absorbed and don’t vote in enough numbers to matter, and to them only exist to float them in their old age on government programs.
@Pinky:
Stop it, just f-ing STOP IT! Man up, apologize and move on. Seriously, I have found you to be reasonable in the past, but since that blow up I don’t see it. The tone of your commentary has changed notably for the worse since you made that regretable comment and decided to double down.
@Pinky:
Oh, if only we had some way to know what he really said!
I don’t think that any OTB’ers are happy about these murders, but if some of them were ideologically consistent and honest with themselves, they would be. If some of you guys believed the things you’ve typed over the last few months, two dead cops should be like an early Christmas present for you. Immoderate words on my part, I know. But I have to tell you, you’ve been like a mommy to Brinsley, scooping up the mashed peas and making encouraging sounds as you put the spoon in his mouth. And now you’re going to act surprised and disgusted that he ate what you gave him? The only thing that should get you down about this story is that the cops weren’t named Roberts and Lewis.
https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/only-one-person-has-blood-on-his-hands-in-the-deaths-of-officers-ramos-and-liu-and-hes-already-dead/
@Pinky:
But I have to tell you, you’ve been like a mommy to Brinsley, scooping up the mashed peas and making encouraging sounds as you put the spoon in his mouth. And now you’re going to act surprised and disgusted that he ate what you gave him?
@Rafer Janders: Yeah. I didn’t say that liberals on this site
“think dead cops is a Christmas present”. I said that if their thinking was consistent with the things they said, and they truly accepted the implications of that thinking, then they would. The former implies malice. The latter allows for hyperbole, rash thinking, et cetera.
@Grewgills: If I thought I should apologize, I would. I’m kind of sorry that I’d never given you guys the impression that I thought that. I watched this site for months – I’m a regular – and that’s definitely what I thought and still do think. People were making weird comments on that thread, as if what happened had no possible connection with the hate that the left had been stirring up. I believed that it was my place to call them on it.
@Pinky:
How do you define “anti-police”? That the police in Ferguson systematically abuse and exploit the black citizens there is not in question. If we talk about this, are we “anti-police”? You basically sound like you are repeating a Bill O’Reilly talking points memo. Do you really live in such black and white universe that we are simply not allowed to track and discuss the actions of the police, and attempt to hold them accountable when they cross the line? Are you that enamored of unquestioning obedience to authority?
Then there is your implication that a group that includes quite a few intelligent, well educated folks is speaking, en masse, without really understanding either the implications or the possible consequences of our words. We need Pinky to explain it to us.
Then there is the fact that you have not been able to produce a single cite that supports your argument. Not one. Zilch, zero. Still.
You seem to be offended whenever someone makes a generalization about conservatives yet you do the same thing to the majority of the commenters on this site…being offended by police brutality hardly implies that one wants police officers to be shot and killed…
@HarvardLaw92: I was flirting with becoming a quant at that point and studied a whole bunch of quantitative finance at that point. NOBODY knew what they were doing at that point! Everyone made the mind-boggingly stupid assumption that stock prices act like atoms In a box, ignoring completely the fact that atoms never scream and panic while humans often do. It was one of those situations where it only works when you don’t stress the system too much, but of course everyone started poking more and more of their fingers into the pie, trying to game the system more and more, and of course the whole thing fell to bits. Too many quants forgot that they were dealing with dynamic systems, and when you’re using historical data to calculate the chance of default that doesn’t mean it’s going to work in the present ensemble.
@Pinky:
You’re being an idiot,and an offensive and dishonest one at that. No one here likes dead cops. No one’s ideology supports or leads to dead cops.
And you can take your liberals inflame race lie and shove it right up your ass. That lie? That’s Nazi level lying. That’s Goebbels level lying.
Go here. Or here. Then come tell me how racism is a liberal fantasy. I dare you, for once, to confront the truth.
@Pinky:
People on this site, and on the left in general, inflame racial hatred in a way that not only encourages violence, but practically taunts people into doing it. You can’t give sermons 24/7 that police are the enemy of the black man and then act surprised when people take up arms against the police.
Where? Where is this happening on OTB? Seriously. Show us a few examples or STFU.
@Pinky:
You’re being an idiot,and an offensive and dishonest one at that. No one here likes dead cops. No one’s ideology supports or leads to dead cops.
And you can take your liberals inflame race lie and shove it right up your ass. That lie? That’s Nazi level lying. That’s Goebbels level lying.
Go here. Or here. Then come tell me how racism is a liberal fantasy. I dare you, for once, to confront the truth.*
*I originally included links which Joyners filter didn’t like. So I’ll spell them out for you: Reddit.com/r/Ni**erSpics and Reddit.com/r/Ni**erFacts. I’m sure you can figure out how to substitute ‘g’s’ for asterisks.
Now, when you come back and spread your next Goebbels-ism, I link you to all the Republican officials who’ve been caught in the last six years passing around pictures of Mr. Obama or his wife as apes.
http://www.redstate.com/2015/03/15/many-conservatives-blowing-it-ferguson-doj-report/
Is Red State “anti-police”? Perhaps they not realize that the unavoidable outcome of their ill considered words is dead cops…
Another sad aspect of this state of affairs is that concern over police militarization and the abuse of police powers is, or was, a rare confluence of interest for liberals and conservatives. Police unions and Fox News have successfully parsed the protests into an atmosphere where a significant percentage of the people in this country believe that the only acceptable attitude towards police is one of unquestioning subservience and a blind eye towards the abuses that, all too often, take place. It’s not unlike the early days of the Iraq war, when even to question the wisdom of our actions was portrayed as crypto-treason.
Cliffy, I am both too drunk and too sober to address you properly. So instead, I’ll just say this: there comes a point when, if you keep saying the same painfully stupid and wrong things over and over, you go beyond the boundaries of being the blatant idiot you are and pass into full-blown pathetic, worthless lying sack of.. well, the sort of thing that’s too low to kick and too wet to step in.
You, cliffy, passed that point about 3.6 years ago, and left it so far in your rear view mirror that it’s showing an actual Doppler shift.
Now I need to sleep this off. I don’t think my liver can survive my getting into the proper state of mind to deal with you.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
As I said…you have the backbone of a jellyfish.
Go away…again.
This is why this “scandal” will go nowhere. It’s really impossible to try to discuss Hillary’s email archiving without discussing Jeb Bush’s email policies ( and Rick Perry’s).Liberals are already asking about the provenance of Jeb’s emails from September-December 2000-a can of worms most Republicans do not want opened.
It’s not surprising then that Jenos took off running at the mention of Jeb. I expect in the future any fake Republican outrage about Hillary’s email practices is goingto be muted at best. People in glass houes…
@Pinky: I can’t believe you don’t have better sense than to go back to defending your dead cop comment. Like @Rafer Janders: I stashed the link and text of that comment in case it came up again. Or in case you had continued to pretend it never happened.
I’ll suggest a little self examination. Your comment flowed more from your Manichean black/white, good/bad, us/them conservative framing than it did from anything anyone on this site wrote.
@An Interested Party:
This reminds me of something Dennis Miller once said about orgasms: nothing interests him more than his own, and nothing interests him less than someone else’s. Many OTB residents find nothing more fascinating than their own observations about other people’s flaws, but are flabbergasted that someone else finds them flawed. If I spent the next year doing nothing but reposting the Christmas present comment, this site still wouldn’t be 50/50 in terms of accusations of racialism. But that’s not why I posted it. I posted it because, having observed the conversation on this site for a long while, I believe it to be true – not about everyone, or the majority, but about some. If you’re so used to 100% of the people on your fave sites being 100% in agreement with you, you need to surf a little more.
(Maybe that’s why anjin-san makes pronouncements about who is welcome around here. He really wants purity. Well, the internet doesn’t work that way, and there may be dozens of readers who agree with me on this. Or maybe there are three readers, and they don’t. Who knows?)
@Pinky:
He really wants
puritypeople who are not assholes.FTFY
@Pinky:
Cite some of those conversations.
@Pinky:
BTW, telling Jenos, who makes something of a habit of his pouty “I’m leaving now” speech that he will not be missed is not the same thing as telling commenters that they “are not welcome” – a privilege reserved for the OTB staff.
When you have to make things up to make your point, you don’t have much of a point. Or perhaps you could show me where I have actually told someone they are not welcome. Wait, what I am thinking? Pinky actually back up one of his accusations? I must need more coffee.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/james-okeefe-kill-cops-script
Yes folks, it’s those race baiting liberals who are the real problem,
@Pinky:
Name names. Cite comments. If you have a leg to stand on back yourself up. If you don’t apologize and move on. Absent that you are being dishonest and your comment is loathsome.
Siting police abuses and pointing out that they mostly target minorities and the poor isn’t incitement to violence, it’s the truth. It doesn’t mean the people that point it out want the police dead, it means they want the system fixed. By the warped logic you seem to be using to support your accusation Radley Balko wants dead cops under his Christmas tree, in his Easter basket, and for Independence Day.
@gVOR08:
That’s the thing: I’ve never pretended it didn’t happen. People here want me to pretend it didn’t happen, but I’ve never denied it, backtracked, or apologized for it. I think it was right. No doubling-down, no moving goalposts, no bot names, no nothing. I said what I said, and I meant what I said. In the next few weeks, there will be a few oblique references to that post and I’ll ignore them, then probably a month from now there’ll be another one, and we’ll all have the exact same conversation again.
I’ve thought about it. Have you guys? Has anyone questioned why it is that someone who has observed their conversations for months would come away with the impression that I have?
@Grewgills:
Consistent problems among our conservative friends here:
1) Linking to things that either prove the opposite of their claim, or simply fail to make any case at all.
2) An absolute refusal to admit error, even when the case against them is overwhelming.
3) Inability to differentiate between “opinion” and “fact.”
4) Deliberate dishonesty.
Pinky, Jenos, bill, Munchbox, James P, it’s the same old same old: caught lying, they double down on the lie.
It’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that their positions have no basis in fact, and that their personal ethics are essentially non-existent.
@michael reynolds: I’ve had a few of those lately myself. I remember stonetools linking to an article that disproved what he was saying. I remember Modulo Myself bringing up subjects then claiming he didn’t. It’s weird.
@Pinky:
Pinky, the difference is that when the liberals here are shown to be wrong, they admit it and stop saying those things.
They are intellectually honest.
You side? Not even a shred of honesty.
There’s a reason for this. Your side must continuously conceal its true beliefs and motives. Our side doesn’t have that problem.
@Pinky:
Also no citations, no links to comments or commenters to prove that they actually said what you claim they said, no proof, no facts, no evidence.
@ michael reynolds / Rafer Janders / Grewgills / anjin-san / gVOR08:
You’re running into the fundamentalist clutch phenomenon, MarkedMan described it in the Ben Carson Flunks Foreign Policy, History post. Michael referenced it in the same post and I’ve excerpted his quote as it perfectly captures both MarkedMan’s original definition and Michael’s description of the modern Republican party.
.
.
Its a term I’ve now become enamored with as it wonderfully describes what seems to happen as you challenge a Republican with facts.
@Loviatar:
Yeah, I like that.
It’s a bizarre phenomenon that for some reason always makes me think of Captain Kirk causing an alien computer to self-destruct by proposing paradoxes.
Humans are a bit more agile than space computers (which for some reason always seem to come packed with fireworks.) If your cosmology is faith-based, you meet contradictory data by simply returning to your basic programming. Daisy. . . Daisy. . . Give me your answer. . . Do.
Heh, seems that Pinky is like all the conservatives here. Very good at making sensational claims. Not so good at backing the claims up with evidence. Now that my name is calls, I am interested in seeing him back up his claims. I may have made such a mistake ( and if so I apologize in advance) but I don’t recall it. I certainly don’t remember any liberal calling for police officer’s deaths or saying they would be happy to see the same. So OK, Mr. Pinky-links please
@Pinky: “Has anyone questioned why it is that someone who has observed their conversations for months would come away with the impression that I have?”
Yup.
And the answer is you’re a dick. And a particularly stupid one, at that.
@Stonetools: https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/isis-is-what-it-says-it-is/
I said that Islamic science never recovered from anti-Aristotelianism. You said “Aristotle is held in high regard in Islamic philosophy” and
linked to an article about the Islamic repudiation of Aristotle. http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ip/rep/H002
I wouldn’t have brought it up again but for Michael’s comment about people linking to things that contradict their argument.
Aha — Pinky falsely accused the commenters here of treating the murder of two police offiers like an early Christmas present, and when challenged multiple times to back that libel up with actual evidence, was not able to, and Stonetools linked to an article regarding Islamic thought’s relation to Aristotelian philosopy that came to a complicated conclusion regarding that subject.
So, basically, both sides do it.
Actually what I prefer is that 100% of the people on my fave sites write the truth rather than casting aspersions on others…no one here has shown any positive agreement with the idea of dead cops so cut the bull$hit…
Are we to cleanse our words of any ill implication they could possibly lead to, in the event someone thinks we’re implying something horrifically violent and uncivilized like killing lawmen without justifying context? That’s kind of a high bar for political correctness.
Nice showcase of a problem here that plenty of the lefties fall victim to as well: everyone’s arguing against the generic R or D, not each other. Or the generic R or D activist anyway.
Eh. I’m the cad who thinks Pinky should apologize and everyone else is being too tetchy in demanding apologies, so just ignore me.
@Tillman: Well, you probably won’t want to be here for the next show in another month or so. It’ll probably follow the exact same script.
@Pinky:
Not to dwell on this, but the article didn’t completely contradict my point. Yes, the article did say Muslim philosophers of the late medevial period rejected Aristotle, but the article also noted that earlier Muslim philosophers did accept Aristotle and tried to integrate his philosophy into Muslim metaphysics, including Avicenna and Averroes, two of the greatest Muslim philosphers.
Moreover, it’s not really clear that Muslim philosophers’ rejection of Aristotle was really responsible for decline of Muslim science .Heck , long after all this happened, the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople and even later, advanced to the gates of Vienna. But any way, one and a half points to you.
Now, about those liberal commenters cheering on murder of the police…